Source: https://openjurist.org/369/us/429
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 12:11:25+00:00

Document:
James M. HARE, Secretary of State of Michigan, et al.
These four members of the state court concluded that nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment or in the decisions of this Court construing the Equal Protection Clause 'prohibits a State from establishing senate electoral districts by geographic areas drawn generally along county lines which result in substantial inequality of voter representation favoring thinly populated areas as opposed to populous ones.' 360 Mich., at 91, 104 N.W.2d, at 110. Accordingly, the original petition for mandamus filed in the Supreme Court of Michigan was dismissed.1 The opinion of the four judges did not so much as mention questions pertaining to the 'jurisdiction' of the court, the 'standing' of the appellant, or the 'justiciability' of his claim.
Appellants filed a timely notice of appeal to this Court, and on docketing the record submitted a jurisdictional statement which set forth the questions presented for review.2 These papers, along with the motion to dismiss or affirm, taken in light of the prevailing opinion in the Michigan Supreme Court, leave no room for doubt but that the precise and single issue in this case is the one presented as Question IV in the jurisdictional statement: 'Do the 1952 amendments to Art. V, § 2 and § 4 of the Michigan Constitution, and the implementing legislation thereto, offend the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including the due-process and equal protection clauses thereof?' That issue is the more precisely delineated by three circumstances: (1) the legislative branch with which this case is concerned is the State Senate (not the entire State Legislature, as in Baker v. Carr); (2) the challenged electoral apportionment reflects the desires of Michigan's citizenry, as expressed in a 1952 popular referendum (and is not, as in Baker v. Carr, the product of legislative inaction);3 and (3) the present apportionment is prescribed by the Michigan Constitution (and is not in conflict with the State Constitution, as in Baker v. Carr).
Were there anything in this Court's recent decision in Baker v. Carr intimating that the constitutional question in this case ought to have been decided differently than it was by the Michigan Supreme Court, I would be content, for reasons given in my dissent in Baker (369 U.S. 186, 330, 82 S.Ct. 691, 771, 7 L.Ed.2d 663), simply to note my dissent to the Court's failure to dismiss this appeal for want of a substantial federal question. But both the majority opinion in the Baker case and a separate concurrence written to dispel any 'distressingly inaccurate impression of what the Court decides,' 369 U.S., at 265, 82 S.Ct., at 736, were at pains to warn that nothing more was decided than '(a) that the (federal district) court possessed jurisdiction of the subject matter; (b) that a justiciable cause of action is stated upon which appellants would be entitled to appropriate relief; and (c) * * * that the appellants have standing to challenge the Tennessee apportionment statutes.' 369 U.S., at 197—198, 265, 82 S.Ct. at 699, 736. How any of the extensive discussion on these three subjects in the Baker majority opinion can be thought to shed light on the discrete federal constitutional question on which the present case turns—a question which was indeed studiously avoided in the majority opinion in Baker—is difficult to understand.
Moreover, the remand cannot be justified on the theory that Baker v. Carr for the first time suggests—albeit sub silentio—that an arbitrary or capricious state legislative apportionment may violate the Equal Protection Clause. For the Michigan Supreme Court assumed precisely that proposition and nonetheless said of the existing apportionment: 'In the face of * * * history and * * * precedent, we find no way by which we can say that the classification we are concerned with herein is 'wholly arbitrary,' and hence repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution as the United States supreme court has construed it to this date.' 360 Mich., at 106, 104 N.W.2d, at 118.
It appears, moreover that in fact five members (a majority) of the Michigan Supreme Court concurred as to this issue. The separate concurring opinion of Justice Black of that court shows that he also concluded 'that a state may—unfettered juridically by the 14th amendment—determine what as a matter of state policy shall be 'a proper diffusion of political initiative' as between the thinly and heavily populated areas of the state.' 360 Mich., at 119—120, 104 N.W.2d, at 125.

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