reverence for the constitution

[Michael Hoover]

> Pre-1962, one could have posed the same question with respect to state
> governments.  At the time, it was quite common for states to have the
> lower house apportioned by population, and the upper house apportioned
> on some roughly geographical basis (in tennesse, for example, simply by
> not making any changes in district lines since 1901).  That year, the
> Supreme Court ruled (Baker v. Carr) that this practice was
> un-Constitutional.  Nowadays, both upper and lower houses in state
> legislatures have  population-based distrists.
> Paul Rosenberg

point is correct although court case cited is incorrect....

SC ruled in *Baker v Carr* (1962) that reapportionent of Tennessee
House of Representatives was judicial issue (a 1946 court had
refused to act on apportionment question in *Colegrove v Green* on
grounds that it was 'political question')...Baker decision eventually 
forced all states to reapportion lower houses and adhere to principle 
of equal numbers of people (if memory serves, 3% plus or minus is
allowed) in all legislative districts...ruling did not, however,
clearly establish whether requirements for equal representation
applied to both houses...

2 years later, in *Reynolds v Sims* (1964), SC applied principle to
state senates as well as state lower houses, overturning Alabama's
method of allocating each county a single seat in state senate...
number of states apportioned upper houses in this manner, justifying 
practice via analogy to US Senate...SC rejected analogy on grounds 
that while states, as sovereign political units, had a right to equal 
representation in the US Senate under US Constitution, counties (and 
other local gov'ts) did not have such status (US Constitution makes no 
reference to local gov't) and, therefore, had no claim to equal 
representation in state senates...

impact of so-called reapportionment decisions was to shift state
legislative attention to metropolitan areas, increase state
appropriations to local gov'ts, and help increase black representation 
in state legislatures even as suburban representation increased more 
than did urban...

SC required congressional districts to be approximately equal in
population in *Wesberry v Sanders* (1964), a Georgia case... 

Michael Hoover