Baker V Carr and Shaw V Reno By Rebecca Walsh Baker V Carr (1961); The Facts The Facts Baker V Carr The Case: Back in the 1900's Tennessee had a law that stated all towns are required to provide the statistics of the population to the state every 10 years. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.
In Baker v. Carr, Mr. Charles Baker went up against Joe Carr who as an appointed representative of Tennessee. Law Library - American Law and Legal InformationNotable Trials and Court Cases - 1954 to 1962Baker v. Carr - Significance, Charles Whittaker, Further Readings, Copyright © 2020 Web Solutions LLC. The Court formulated the famous "one person, one vote" standard under American jurisprudence for legislative redistricting, holding that each individual had to be weighted equally in legislative apportionment. 951 Views Program ID: 327719-1 Category: C-SPAN Specials Format: Call-In Location: Washington, District of Columbia, United States. The Court’s willingness to address legislative reapportionment in this Tennessee case paved the way for the “one man, one vote” standard of American representative democracy. Bicameral states became equally apportioned. Former Solicitor General Constitutional Law Scholar, Subject: Allowing redistricting to be considered by the Federal Courts, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), Earl Warren & California's Reapportionment Debate, Justice Brennan's Law Clerk on Baker v. Carr.

In a majority opinion joined by five other justices, Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr. held that redistricting did not qualify as a political question, though he remanded the case to the federal district court for further proceedings. and its Licensors [7] After he left the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren called the Baker v. Carr line of cases the most important in his tenure as Chief Justice. "One person, one vote" was first applied as a standard for Congressional districts. The Court split 6 to 2 in ruling that Baker's case was justiciable, producing, in addition to the opinion of the Court by Justice William J. Brennan, three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. The early 1900s saw both population increases and rapid urban migration in America. Argued April 19–20, 1961 The dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, in which I join, demonstrates the abrupt departure the majority makes from judicial history by putting the federal courts into this This procedure for getting to the Supreme Court was by this date unusual, and everyone involved in the case recognized that everything about it was extraordinary. Baker v. Carr and the amended Ohio Constitution was a direct result of urbanization. Divided government and gridlock in the United States. In Tennessee, while people flocked to cities like Memphis, the legislative districts stayed the same. [8], This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings, Dissent by Justices Frankfurter and Harlan, Associate Justice Charles Evans Whittaker, List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 369, "Whittaker is leaving U.S. Supreme Court", Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions, United States congressional apportionment, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baker_v._Carr&oldid=982090317, United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court, United States electoral redistricting case law, United States One Person, One Vote Legal Doctrine, United States political question doctrine case law, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The redistricting of state legislative districts is not a, Brennan, joined by Warren, Black, Douglas, Clark, Stewart. The case did not have any immediate effect on electoral districts, but it set an important precedent regarding the power of federal courts to address redistricting.

This principle was formally enunciated in Reynolds v. Sims (1964). In many states it reduced the disproportionate power of rural voters and their legislative representation and increased that of urban and suburban voters and their representation. [1] The Tennessee State Constitution required that legislative districts for the Tennessee General Assembly be redrawn every ten years according to the federal census to provide for districts of substantially equal population (as was to be done for congressional districts).