Opinion ID: 2077353
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: baker criteria for determining whether a political question is presented

Text: In Baker, the Court determined that a claim of discriminatory apportionment of state representatives was justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause. Before Baker, the Court had held that a challenge to state action based on the Guaranty Clause, [49] under which the United States guarantees each state a republican form of government, presented a nonjusticiable political question. [50] To explain the difference in these outcomes, the Court first reviewed its political question jurisprudence in several areas. It then defined six independent tests, [51] for determining whether an issue was nonjusticiable: Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found [(1)] a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or [(2)] a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or [(3)] the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or [(4)] the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or [(5)] an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or [(6)] the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question. Unless one of these formulations is inextricable from the case at bar, there should be no dismissal for nonjusticiability on the ground of a political question's presence. The doctrine of which we treat is one of political questions, not one of political cases. The courts cannot reject as no law suit a bona fide controversy as to whether some action denominated political exceeds constitutional authority. The cases we have reviewed show the necessity for discriminating inquiry into the precise facts and posture of the particular case, and the impossibility of resolution by any semantic cataloguing. [52] As set forth, the tests are disjunctive: a court should not dismiss a case for nonjusticiability [u]nless one of these formulations is inextricable from the case at bar. [53] The Baker Court explained that claims under the Guaranty Clause were nonjusticiable because they embodied elements that defined a political question. Under the second testlack of judicially discoverable and manageable standardsthe Court could not resolve apportionment claims. It stated that the Guaranty Clause is not a repository of judicially manageable standards which a court could utilize independently in order to identify a State's lawful government. [54] In contrast, the equal protection claim presented the issue of the consistency of state action and was justiciable. The Court left open the possibility, however, that some 14th Amendment claims would be nonjusticiable because they are too enmeshed with one of the political question tests. [55] The Coalition, however, argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the Baker tests. But Baker is still alive. As recently as 2004, the Court applied the second test to determine that political gerrymandering claims regarding congressional redistricting plans presented nonjusticiable political questions. [56]