Court Opinion

ID: 9696132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:38:00.851615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:18.896561
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring).
“You do have a Federal constitutional right, but you just don’t have any remedy!”
Judge Wallace, writing rebelliously in the twin case of Radford v. Gary (WD Okla), 145 F Supp 541, 547 (affirmed 352 US 991 [77 S Ct 559, 1 L ed 2d 540]), so characterized the way complainant Rad-ford was turned out of court. Sympathizing with *111the judge’s reasons for dissent in the Radford Case, I am nevertheless convinced that we must — in this case— make the same “paradoxical pronouncement”; that the plaintiff has a constitutional right but no remedy. Admittedly, in a case which supposedly is governed by equitable principles, this stultifies our great maxims: “Equality is equity” — “Equity will not suffer a wrong without a remedy.” And it is to say in so many words that the courts, when faced and challenged by a gross political violation of the equality clause, have neither the power nor the authority “to preserve the integrity of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
This case cannot be decided on non-Federal ground. The decisive question is whether the 1952 amendments of article 5 of our Constitution justiciably offend the plaintiff’s right to equality, of representative value of his vote, as apparently guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The mentioned amendments have modified, to the extent of manifest conflict, Michigan’s original guaranty of equal protection of the laws (Constitution 1908, article 2, § 1). Hence “the earlier provision must yield to the later” (Thoman v. City of Lansing, 315 Mich 566, 579; followed by the writer and Justices Smith and Voelker in Graham v. Miller, 348 Mich 684, 697).1 The result is that Michigan’s Constitution .authorizes no relief — in fact it denies the relief said article 2 otherwise provides — in this latest of cases where due showing has been made of flagrant discrimination against citizens in the exercise of their political rights.
Once, prior to adoption of such amendments, relief in these cases was freely granted (Williams v. Secretary of State, 145 Mich 447; Giddings v. Secretary *112of State, 93 Mich 1 [16 LRA 402]). Now we are-powerless to act unless this State Court, seated to decide the presented Federal question, is jurisdictionally authorized to decree that the supremely authoritative “pledge of the protection of equal laws” (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356, 369 [6 S Ct 1064, 30 L ed 220]) overcomes the crescently iniquitous and discriminatory effect of local constitutional provisions such as confront us here.

First: The Federal Question.

Colegrove v. Green, 328 US 549 (66 S Ct 1198, 90 L ed 1432); MacDougall v. Green, 335 US 281 (69 S Ct 1, 93 L ed 3); and South v. Peters, 339 US 276 (70 S Ct 641, 94 L ed 834), were written into the-juridical scroll a decade and more ago. Since then, as in the case of Terry’s last order to Custer, every penstroke in each of the 3 cases has been analyzed and assized by eminent experts. Yet the interpretive war rages on — all over the country — without visible abatement. This is made doubly clear by the excellent briefs of the parties before us.
For myself, there is no difficulty. Reading all 3 cases with compared and contemplative care, I can only conclude that the supreme court has compulsively advised all courts of the land that the Fourteenth Amendment, insofar as it calls for equality among citizens in the exercise of their voting rights, imposes an obligation which depends for its bidding solely upon legislative or political action. In such regard the Federally declared right to equal protection is like the guarantee by article 4 of “a republican form of government,” that is to say, it is not enforeible in the courts.
Assuming as they obey that judges of subordinate courts have a right to speak their views (see for example Colegrove v. Green (ND Ill), 64 F Supp 632, 634; Baker v. Carr (MD Tenn), 179 F Supp 824, *113828), I respectfully suggest that the dissenters were right in all 3 of the above cited cases. Some day, inevitably, the supreme court will authorize justiciable employment of the equality clause in cases of present political nature. But that day has not yet arrived.
Already, in this swiftly advancing second half of the Twentieth Century, it becomes more and more apparent that the law, while it “must be stable,” cannot “stand still.”
“Sooner or later, if the demands of social utility are sufficiently urgent, if the operation of an existing rule is sufficiently productive of hardship or inconvenience, utility will tend to triumph. ‘The view of the legal system as a closed book was never anything but a purely theoretical dogma of the schools. Jurisprudence has never been able in the long run to resist successfully a social or economic need that was strong and just.’ ” The Growth of the Law, Cardozo, pp 117, 118.
The times now exert progressively greater pressure on the courts to employ — in more and more types of cases — the great principles of equality one finds in the maxims of equity and the mandates of the National Constitution and of most State constitutions.2 Equity’s greatest — and sore needed— period of service to the law lies immediately ahead. So does that of the equality clause. Nonetheless, in cases where a “political thicket” becomes the thorny path to equal protection, the Federal courts *114—and that for the present case includes this Court— are not yet ready to move.
The question being exclusively one for vanguard determination by supreme authority, we have no power of re-examination of precedents as in local cases, and no right as a presently inferior court “to embrace the exhilarating opportunity of anticipating a doctrine which may be in the womb of time, but whose birth is distant” (Judge Learned Hand, dissenting in Spector Motor Service v. Walsh [CCA 2], 139 F2d 809, 823). Which is to suggest, in a parenthetically light aside, that Judge Hand’s pointed and ultimately honored epigram (see Spector Motor Service v. McLaughlin, 323 US 101 [65 S Ct 152, 89 L ed 101]), must have been written with the trenchant “seeds of time” passage from Macbeth in mind. That passage I now repeat to my cherished Brethren as they continue to tug and sweat over the construction, declination, and punctuation of the majority opinions of MacDougall and South:
“If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate.” (Act 1, sc 3.)
Yes, each opinion reported in Colegrove, MacDougall, and South is a planted seed of time. But no man or group of men assembled at our conference table can say — in terms of a judgment or decree of this Court — which of the grains will grow, and which will not. We lack the authority as well as the ability so to do.

Second: The Position of a State Court with Respect to a Decisive Federal Question.

It is said with considerable force that Colegrove, MacDougall, and South are controlling directives ad*115dressed solely to subordinate Federal courts," and that they do not govern the jurisdiction or the powers of State courts. I disagree, so far as concerns the case at bar.
Writing in previous cases, I have recognized the continuing obligation of this Court, “equally with the courts of the Union,” to guard and enforce every right secured by the National Constitution whenever such right or rights are properly asserted here (Connor v. Herrick, 349 Mich 201, 206; New York Central R. Co. v. Detroit, 354 Mich 637, 665). Robb v. Connolly, 111 US 624 (4 S Ct 544, 28 L ed 542) (followed in Plaquemines Tropical Fruit Co. v. Henderson, 170 US 511 [18 S Ct 685, 42 L ed 1126]; Mooney v. Holohan, 294 US 103 [55 S Ct 340, 79 L ed 791, 98 ALR 406]; United States v. Bank of New York & Trust Co., 296 US 463 [56 S Ct 343, 80 L ed 331], and Irvin v. Dowd, 359 US 394[ 79 S Ct 825, 3 L ed 2d 900]), sufficiently indicates our continuing responsibility in such regard. In Plaque-mines the court quoted Hamilton from the Federalist, ending as follows (pp 515, 516 of report):
“When in addition to this we consider the State governments and the National government as they truly are, in the light of kindred systems and as parts of one whole, the inference seems to be conclusive that the State courts would have a concurrent jurisdiction in cases arising under the laws of the Union, where it was not expressly prohibited.”
This concurrent obligation works — in the State courts as in the Federal courts — both ways. Any defendant who interposes a Federal right in bar of relief sought on Federal ground is entitled, equally with his opponent, to a judicial determination that one or the other of such asserted rights is decisive. Here the petitioner appeals for relief under the Fourteenth Amendment by due pleading and con*116vincing proof of invidious discrimination; discrimination effected by the 1952 amendments before us. Standing against the grant of such relief all defendants allege and rely upon another Federal right; that of power of a State to discriminate politically — as here — without justiciable offense to the Fourteenth .Amendment.3 Thus the respective contenders insist on contradictory Federal rights.
It is the duty of this Court to resolve such questions under the exclusive guidance of authoritative decisions of the supreme court. As said in South Carolina v. Bailey, 289 US 412, 420 (53 S Ct 667, 77 L ed 1292), it is our function “to administer the law prescribed by the Constitution * * * of the United States, as construed by this [United States supreme] court.” I have proceeded and shall proceed on that fundament.
The Fourteenth Amendment assays no richer in the State courts than in the courts of the United States. If on corresponding submission of this case ■ — in one of the courts of the Union4 — the Fourteenth Amendment would not serve to authorize equitable relief, then it provides no ground for relief here. The reason is that our jurisdiction on proper presentment of a Federal right is coextensive and coterminous with that of the Federal courts. We sit in these cases as a court of jurisdiction concurrent with that of the inferior Federal courts; literally as a court of the United States. We have the authority to grant relief on strength of a right advanced under national laws when ancl only when an inferior Federal court could and would do so on a similar presentation.
*117The leading case dictating this conclusion is Claflin v. Houseman, 93 US 130 (23 L ed 833), from which the following is taken (p 137):
“The fact that a State court derives its existence and functions from the State laws is no reason why it should not afford relief; because it is subject also to the laws of the United States, and is just as much bound to recognize these as operative within the State as it is to recognize the State laws. The two together form one system of jurisprudence, which constitutes the law of the land for the State; and the courts of the two jurisdictions are not foreign to each other, nor to be treated by each other as such, but as courts of the same country, having jurisdiction partly different and partly concurrent.”
Of Claflin the supreme court more recently has said (Testa v. Katt, 330 US 386, 390, 391 [67 S Ct 810, 91 L ed 967, 172 ALR 225]):
“The opinion of a unanimous court in that case was strongly buttressed by historic references and persuasive reasoning. It repudiated the assumption that Federal laws can be considered by the States as though they were laws emanating from a foreign sovereign. Its teaching is that the Constitution and the laws passed pursuant to it are the supreme laws of the land, binding alike upon States, courts, and the people, ‘any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.’ It asserted that the obligation of States to enforce these Federal laws is not lessened by reason of the form in which they are cast or the remedy which they provide.”5
*118All this considered in sum, it must be said that a State court cannot grant relief on pleading and proof of an invidious and otherwise actionable violation of the equality clause unless. on correspondingly proper pleading and proof an inferior court of the Union could and should do so. This is the order of the Constitution. It is addressed to us by the second division of the Sixth Article.

Third: MacDougall, in Particular, Determines the Merits of Today’s Constitutional Question.

MacDougall holds, in per curiam form (pp 283, 284):
“To assume that political power is a function exclusively of numbers is to disregard the practicalities of government. Thus the Constitution protects the interests of the smaller against the greater by giving in the senate entirely unequal representation to populations. It would be strange indeed, and doctrinaire, for this court, applying such broad constitutional concepts as due process and equal protection of the laws, to deny a State the power to assure a proper diffusion of political initiative as between its thinly populated counties and those having concentrated masses, in view of the fact that the latter have practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls not available to the former. The Constitution — a practical instrument of government — malees no such demands on the States.”
I am not alone in accepting this as meritoriously authoritative. Professor Corwin, writing in pursuance of “Senate Joint Resolution 69” the “Constitution of the United States of America” (United States Government Printing Office, 1953), analyzes Colegrove first on page 548 of the volume. Then he turns to MacDougall and writes, of the majority opinion:
*119“In MacDougall v. Green, however, the court seemed to regard as justiciable the question of the validity of the provision of the Illinois election code requiring that a petition for the nomination of candidates of a new political party be signed by 25,000 voters including at least 200 from each of at least 50 of the State’s 102 counties, for it went on to sustain the provision in a brief per curiam opinion.” (Emphasis supplied.)
And Professor Kanper, of the Law School of the University of Michigan,6 views MacDougall in his “Cases and Materials on Constitutional Law” (Prentice-Hall, 1954), this way: “Language used in the per curiam opinion indicates that the decision was on the merits of the constitutional question.” (p 60.)
But recently the 3-judge court assembled to hear Baker v. Carr (MD Tenn), 179 F Supp 824, concluded as I conclude (p 828):
“With the plaintiffs’ argument that the legislature of Tennessee is guilty of a clear violation of the State constitution and of the rights of the plaintiffs the court entirely agrees. It also agrees that the evil is a serious one which should be corrected without further delay. But even so the remedy in this situation clearly does not lie with the courts. It has long been recognized and is accepted doctrine that there are indeed some rights guaranteed by the Constitution for the violation of which the courts cannot give redress.”
Much though we may be impressed by the searching and — as I view them — preseiently written minority opinions of Justices Black and Douglas (in Colegrove, MacDougall, and South), I find myself unable to conclude other than as asserted by the present defendants, that is to say, the last word from the supreme court is that a State may — unfettered *120juridically by the Fourteenth 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. So terminates our proper inquiry, likewise our jurisdictional function, in this case.

Fourth: The Argument “In Terr or em”.

I write from this point for the future and its contingencies. This indeed may be the case (or one of the cases) where dissenting opinions of the past are due to become nationally supreme law. We cannot foretell, of course, yet should prepare now for the event should it occur. I would, then, dispose now of defendants’ fearsome argument, confronting us as in all like cases, that any present grant of relief would result in legal and political chaos throughout the State and partial destruction of the State government.
If this Court were possessed of authority to rule, and had duly decided to rule, that the amendments in question offend and so fall before the equality clause, the immediate result of our judgment and decree would simply be that of prospective reinstatement of original sections 2 and 4 of said article 5 (Const 1908). Courts of equity, determined to do justice and to prevent disruption and uncertainty (the recent “desegregation cases” are an example), can and presumably will shape their decrees to the needs of the case at hand. We have said so as concerns our own jurisdiction (Herpolsheimer v. A. B. Herpolsheimer Realty Co., 344 Mich 657, 665), and so it would be in the hypothesized event.
Let the supreme court loan the Fourteenth Amendment to the State courts — for employment in cases where the constitution or laws of a State create and insure gross inequality of voting power of citizens — , and those courts will experience little difficulty in *121working ont as needed a continuing general observance of the equality clause. There will be no devastation or ruination of Michigan, if on possible review of this case the 1952 amendments are held invalid. This frightful picture of impending desolation is “for the most part a figment of excited brains.”7 (Politically excited, I must add.) We can, if authorized to proceed, control the effect of our decree or decrees so that transition becomes orderly, making this provision effective prospectively, that one effective retrospectively, others effective instanter, all as proof and indicated adjustment may require. See, in such procedural regard, Certain-Teed Products Corporation v. Paris Township, 351 Mich 434; Ib., 355 Mich 302; and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483, 495, 496 (74 S Ct 686, 98 L ed 873, 38 ALR2d 1180).

Fifth: The Merits as Discussed in Other Opinions.

No one expects that mathematical nicety of voting equality can be worked out or ever would be effected by the election laws of a State. Reasonable latitude has always been allowed for classification upon fair bases. The question whether legislation of a State — effected by its constitution or statutory law — does or does not arbitrarily discriminate in violation of the equality clause is usually one of degree.8 Nevertheless, and for a’ that, when it is ordained and assured by local legislation that the representative value of an elector’s vote shall be many times greater — and more and more so as time goes *122on — than that of another elector whose sole offense is that of living in a heavily populated area, the presented Federal right should change its color to that of a hospitably received justiciable question.
Here we find that amendatory section 2 of said article 5 ruthlessly and progressively discriminates against great masses of citizens in favor of a minority of citizens. Those residing in the least populous portions of the State are guaranteed a steadily greater measure of legislative control, by their votes, than are those residing in the remainder of the State. The result is worse now, by far, than that which was condemned so vigorously in Giddings, supra. Indeed it has just become more flagrant as it bids substantial disfranchisement during the 1960’s.9
It is said, however, that discrimination effected by the 1952 amendments is not actionable for a separate reason; that substantial inequality of voting strength was “built into the Constitution long before the Fourteenth Amendment.” The reference is to the original and presently fixed right (by article 1 and amendatory article 17) of each State to 2 senators, and the inference is left that it is quite all right — despite the command of the equality clause— to build gross inequality of senatorial representation into the legislative structure of a State because *123such was done and is now done among the States. As to this point I must have a word of rebuttal based on facts rather than judicial opinion.
Every schoolboy knows the historic reason for the “built-in” right of each State to 2 senators. The Federalists reluctantly consented to such feature of the national legislative structure for recorded reasons of fully debated compromise. The Constitution has ordained accordingly since ratification was concluded in 1790. But this provision became a part — and an exclusive part — of the National edifice only. The Fourteenth Amendment, on the other hand, did not become a part of the Constitution until 78 years later. Section 1 of that amendment, far from complementing or inferentially approving for each State the National plan of senatorial representation, was and now is a “built-in” order directed to each State; an order that no State shall deny “to any person” within that State the equal protection of the laws. So the Constitution by article 1 “built into” its permanent National framework that which the Fourteenth Amendment has prohibited each State — relevantly and reasonably — from doing within its borders. Article 1 (supported later by amendatory article 17) guarantees inequality of the representative value of a man’s vote so far as concerns the National senate; whereas the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a substantial approximation of the very opposite within the framework of the government of each State. This is the way — factually—the great Instrument stands at present.
I agree fully with Mr. Justice Kavanagh’s presentation of the case and especially with his conclusions upon the admitted as well as proven facts. But I do not agree, MacDougall and South considered, that the showing made here authorizes relief. This Court *124cannot invalidate the 1952 amendments excepting by force of higher authority, arriving here in virtue of jurisdiction concurrent with that of the Federal courts. There being no such jurisdiction, applicable to cases of discrimination by local law against the representative value of a man’s vote, we cannot proceed.
Finding no alternative than that of due pursuit of the majority opinions of MacDougall and South, I vote to dismiss plaintiff’s petition.

 My reasons for holding that this Court cannot examine, now, the procedures by which the 1952 amendments were submitted to and .adopted by the people, appear in the Graham Case.

 “It may take a ‘rotten-borough1 condition much worse than now prevails in most of our States, a dramatie sitdown strike of urban taxpayers, an unexpected new judicial attitude of willingness to come to grips with the situation, or an increased awareness of citizens to the grave consequences of failure to provide a truly representative assembly, to provide the necessary impetus to aetion on this problem.” Professor Short, of the University of Minnesota, writing under the title “Legislative Reapportionment” in 17 Law and Contemporary Problems (Duke Univ School of Law), p 385.

 The answer of defendants is that of the defendants in Colegrove, quoted as follows:
“Defendants’ answer is expressed briefly and tersely. ‘Granted— What of it?’ ” (64 F Supp 632, 633).

 Say, before a 3-judge Federal court convened at Detroit.

 To same effect see Blythe v. Hinckley, 180 US 333 (21 S Ct 390, 45 L ed 557), and Second Employers’ Liability Cases, 223 US 1 (32 S Ct 169, 56 L ed 327). In Blythe this passage appears (p 338):
“The State courts had concurrent jurisdiction with the circuit courts of the United States, to pass on the Federal questions thus intimated, for the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States are as much a part of the laws of every State as its own local laws and constitution.”

 Author of “Frontiers of Constitutional Liberty” (1956).

 See quotation, Park v. Employment Security Comm., 355 Mich 103, 147, note.

 “It is a question of degree whether I have been negligent. It is a question of degree whether in the use of my own land, 1 have created a nuisanee which may be abated by my neighbor. It is a question of degree whether the law which takes my property and limits my conduct, impairs my liberty unduly. So also the duty of a judge becomes itself a question of degree, and he is a useful judge or a poor one as he estimates the measure accurately or loosely.” Mr. Justice Cardozo’s “The Nature óf the Judicial Process,” pp 161, 162.

 As this supplemental footnote is written (May 21, 1960) the Detroit Dree Press has just reported (under heading “A Message Written in [1960] Census Figures”) that “Macomb county’s population has more than doubled in a deeade and that Oakland county’s has increased 73.6%.” Yet Macomb and Oakland counties, already deplorably shortchanged by amended section 2 in terms of senatorial representation, will continue as before with an allotment of 1 senator only for each.
To this situation it would seem that the conclusion of the court, in Truax v. Corrigan, 257 US 312, 336 (42 S Ct 124, 66 L ed 254, 27 ALR 375), is directly applicable:
“If this is not a denial of the equal protection of the laws, then it is hard to conceive what would be. To hold it not to be, would be, to use the expression of Mr. Justice Brewer in Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Ellis, 165 US 150, 154 (17 S Ct 255, 41 L ed 666), to make the guaranty of the equality clause ‘a rope of sand.’ ”