Along with Baker v.Carr (1962) and Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), it was part of a series of Warren Court cases that applied the principle of "one person, one vote" to U.S. legislative bodies.
Their complaint is simply that the representatives are not sufficiently numerous or powerful. But they are permitted to vote and their votes are counted. The case arose from a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee, which had not conducted redistricting since 1901.
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the electoral districts of state legislative chambers must be roughly equal in population. Of all of the groundbreaking rulings his Court rendered throughout his tenure as Chief Justice, he called the Court’s choice to tackle this issue in Baker, its “most vital decision.”
Brennan also talked down Justices Black and Douglas from their usual absolutist positions to achieve a compromise.Appellants invoke the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
This affected numerous state legislatures that had not redistricted congressional districts for decades, despite major population shifts. They go to the polls, they cast their ballots, they send their representatives to the state councils. Alth Carr (1962), which established the principle of “one person, one vote,” provided the grounds for national legislative redistricting.… Felix Frankfurter …opinion, a 64-page dissent in Baker v. In 1964, the Supreme Court would hand down two cases, By the time of Baker's lawsuit, the population had shifted such that his district in Shelby County had about ten times as many residents as some of the The state of Tennessee argued that the composition of legislative districts was essentially a political question, not a judicial one, as had been held by The opinion was finally handed down in March 1962, nearly a year after it was initially argued. It rings with the same distinctively American clarion call for equality and individual empowerment that reaches back through the ages to the nation’s founding: “…of the people, by the people, for the people”, “All men are created equal”…But it wasn’t until 1963 that “One person, one vote” became a widely articulated core principle of the Constitution when it was first spoken by Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Supreme Court.Yet at the time these decisions were anything but “inevitable.” It was a wrenching, agonizing time for the Justices. In this documentary, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer and other experts discuss how the principle of one person, one vote emerged from a series of landmark decisions in the 1960s, including Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims. The Baker v.Carr case established the "one man, one vote" doctrine.The United States Supreme Court heard the Baker v.Carr case in 1962.Before this Supreme Court decision, most legislative districts across Ohio and in many other states did not have similar population numbers. It also ultimately affected the composition of state legislat… 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 The large majority in this case can in many ways be attributed to Justice Brennan, who convinced Potter Stewart that the case was a narrow ruling dealing only with the right to challenge the statute. Having declared redistricting issues justiciable in Baker, the court laid out a new test for evaluating such claims. Baker v. Carr. An examination of the Supreme Court’s dilemmas and tensions as it stepped into the “political thicket” of voting and representational equality, establishing the practice of what has become a core American principle: “One person, one vote.”It has the echo of a core American belief. The ideal of one person, one vote motivated the founders of the United States of America to establish a census when they drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787.
The state of Tennessee argued that the composition of legislative districts constituted a nonjusticiable 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. 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. To establish equality in voting and representation, the Court had to overcome deeply rooted political traditions throughout the entire nation, entrenched political powers fiercely opposed to change, and its own precedent, Through all of this, the Chief Justice understood the urgent necessity to press ahead. Starting with the Court’s 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr and culminating in 1964 with the case of Reynolds v. Sims, the value of “One person, one vote,” once brought to light, seemed so profoundly rooted in the Constitution its practice became “inevitable.” Yet at the time these decisions were anything but … ‘One person, one vote’ standard wiped away On Friday, I caught up with Nashville attorney Harris Gilbert, one of the few surviving members of the original legal team in Baker v. Carr.