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Baker v. Carr (1962)

Definition

A Supreme Court case that held that federal courts could hear cases that claimed that malapportionment of state legislatures violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. By holding that such cases were justiciable, the Supreme Court paved the way for federal courts (and not just state courts) to hear and decide on reapportionment issues.

Plaintiff had sought to force reapportionment of voting districts in Tennessee on the ground that unequal representation was unconstitutional; the lower courts had denied relief on the grounds of non-justiciability. The Supreme Court held that the constitutionality of legislative appointment schemes was not a political question and therefore was justiciable (i.e., the Court could hear the case and decide on the merits).

The Court delineated a series of factors, at least one of which must be present, in order for the case to be a non-justiciable political question: (a) commitment of the issue to a branch of government other than the judiciary; (b) lack of standards for resolving the issue; (c) impossibility of the judiciary to resolve the issue without first making a policy determination; (d) a judicial decision of that matter as a lack of respect for other branches of government; (e) a political decision has already been made; or (f) the potential for multiple pronouncements by various branches on one question.

Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary

A U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court held that federal courts could decide cases questioning whether state voting districts were properly delineated. (These questions were previously left in the hands of state legislatures.) The case initiated a long series of federal court cases dealing with apportionment issues. (See also: Reynolds v. Sims)

Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.

August 19, 2010, 5:27 pm

“Baker v. Carr was simply a decision that a federal court has jurisdiction to deal with and remedy such a wide disparity in voting representation as to amount to a deprivation of due process and equal protection. There the situation was particularly aggravated because the Tennessee Legislature had taken no action to comply with the State’s own Constitution. A comparable hypothetical state of facts would exist had the New York Legislature taken no action since 1901 when New York County held a high percentage of the State’s 37 seats whereas today the County’s population is only one-tenth of the State’s.” C.J. Moore, Wright v. Rockefeller, 211 F.Supp. 460, 466 (D.C.N.Y. 1962).