Court Opinion

ID: 9720038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:13:38.306049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:12.442075
License: Public Domain

Dethmers, J.
(dissenting). I concur with what Mr. Chief Justice Carr has written and would add somewhat thereto.
An equal protection of the laws problem is not presented. Complaint is made of apportionment of senators on a basis such that the senator elected from plaintiff’s district represents more electors than do senators from other districts. It is said that plaintiff’s vote is thus debased or diluted. Plaintiff can vote for one candidate for senator and one senator represents his district. The same is true of every voting elector in the State, regardless of the population of his district. The rights of each elector in Michigan are, in that respect, no more nor less than plaintiff’s, whatever the number of voters residing or voting with such elector in his district. If half the people in plaintiff’s district were to move from it overnight, would plaintiff’s rights in the respect here considered be doubled, or, if the direction of the move were reversed and the population of his district doubled, would his mentioned rights thereby be halved, and his vote debased or diluted accordingly? Would the degree or extent of his protection of the laws thereby be altered ? He would still have 1 vote for senator and 1 senator representing his district. That is all he would have if he dwelt in a district less populous. Insofar, then, as the right of exercise of the franchise is concerned, there is no discrimination, no inequality, no vote debasement, no denial of the equal protection of the laws. So much for plaintiff’s right to vote for and to have his district represented by 1 senator.
Even a dissenting opinion may, now and then, give rise to an interesting question or thought worthy of pursuit. Can it be, .to paraphrase Mr. Justice *213Frankfurter in Baker v. Carr, 369 US 186 (82 S Ct 691, 7 L ed 2d 663), that plaintiff’s real or underlying-complaint is that present apportionment of the senate deprives him of what he conceives to he his “proportionate share of political influence” ? Concerning this, Justice Frankfurter went on to write (p 299): “This, of course, is the practical effect of any allocation of power within the institutions of government.” To put the question another way, is it contended that if plaintiff’s district were cut in two, with 1 senator apportioned to each half, this would serve to enhance his protection of the laws? He still could vote for hut 1 senator, and but 1 would represent his district. Assuming, however, that an elector might say with accuracy that senate reapportionment on a strictly population basis, as distinguished from that now required by State Constitution, would result in transforming the present senate minority of adherents to his political faith and party into a senate majority, would it be denial of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection of the laws to deny that elector such senate transformation? To pose the question is to highlight the ludicrousness of an affirmative answer. But if the mentioned senate transformation were accomplished by the proposed reapportionment, what, then, of the equal protection of the laws for electors of the opposite political faith or party? It is no answer for one to say that those of my political party are entitled to more protection of the laws because we are in the majority. It was precisely that which the Fourteenth Amendment protection of minorities was designed to prevent. It is obvious, then, that an equal protection of the laws question is not involved in this contemplation. In a republican form of government, guaranteed to every State by the Federal Constitution,  it is in the nature of things that with *2142 major parties occupying the field, exclusively, unless their strength he equal, one must, for the nonce, he the majority and the other the minority party in legislative halls. No constitutional rights of party members or other groups are thereby infringed upon nor are they thus denied the equal protection of the laws.
Or is the essence of plaintiff’s complaint that the alleged malapportionment of the senate has worked for him, and others in Michigan similarly situated, a denial of the equal protection of the laws in that resultant legislative enactments have conferred lésser benefits or imposed greater burdens on them than upon others resident in less populous senatorial districts?' This, at least, would present something in the nature of an equal protection of the laws question. Plaintiff’s petition does not so allege nor is''there aught in the record to show or establish it. The burden of proof in that respect rests on plaintiff. It has neither been undertaken nor sustained.
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (74 S Ct 686, 98 L ed 873, 38 ALR2d 1180), the supreme court of the United States held that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits States from maintaining racially segregated schools. On that same day it decided Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 US 497 (74 S Ct 693, 98 L ed 884), holding that racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. It was the court’s view that action which would violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when perpetrated by a State could scarcely be squared with requirements of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause as relates to action by the Federal government. While the court did say that “equal protection of the laws” and “due process' of law” are not always interchañgeablé phrases, it, *215nevertheless, discerned such close relationship between the 2 concepts and similarity in effect and consequences as to cause the 2 to compel the same result with respect to the 2 like factual situations in the 2 noted cases. Cited as authority therefor was Hurd v. Hodge, 334 US 24 (68 S Ct 847, 92 L ed 1187). Can it be assumed, then, with the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, relating to the Federal government, apparently seeming to the founding fathers to be left unoffended by the express provision of article 1, § 3, of that same Constitution for selection of 2 senators from each State, that, at a time when the United States senate continued, as now, to be so composed, it was intended by the adoption of the related equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, applicable to State governments, to thereby prohibit apportionment to the State senates on a similar basis, not keyed strictly to the population levels of the several senatorial districts? Sound reasoning forbids such conclusion. To give the Fourteenth Amendment such effect today is to recognize some subsequent amendment thereof accomplished by means other than those prescribed by the Constitution itself for its amendment.
That the United States supreme court has not deemed such to be the meaning and intent of the equal protection clause is evident enough from its unanimous opinion and decision in Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall (88 US) 162 (22 L ed 627). There, the court held that the rights or privileges of suffrage were not within the meaning of the equal protection clause, pointing out (p 175) that, if they were guaranteed thereby, there would have been no occasion for adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment providing that the rights of citizens of the United States to' vote shall not be abridged. The same may be said of the Nineteenth,Amendment, providing, for women’s-*216suffrage. The fact of the adoption of these latter amendments reveals the national thinking that the Fourteenth had no such purpose or effect. See, also, the many Federal decisions cited in Mr. Justice Edwards’ opinion in 1960, when this case made its previous appearance before us, to the effect that the apportionment here under attack is not violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. That it is and always has been part and parcel of the plan for republican government in vogue not only in the government of the United States, but in most of the States, may also be observed from the facts and statistics and recital of the history of the subject set forth in that opinion. This is indicative of the national concept, throughout the decades, of republican government and the absence of involvements under the equal protection clause and of the concurrence therein of the United States supreme court. Baker v. Carr, supra, and Scholle v. Secretary of State, 369 US 429 (82 S Ct 910, 8 L ed 2d 1), are not holdings to the contrary on the merits. The mandate to this Court in Scholle was simply to reconsider this case in the light of Baker v. Carr, supra. In the latter, the court was careful to point out that it was not passing on the merits, but only on questions of jurisdiction, justiciability, and standing of appellants as proper parties. (See opinions of Justices Brennan, Douglas, and Stewart.) In fact, particular reference is made in Justice Stewart’s opinion to MacDougall v. Green, 335 US 281 (69 S Ct 1, 93 L ed 3), relied upon and quoted by Mr. Chief Justice Carr herein, and, as noted by him, Mr. Justice Stewart wrote (p 266) that the court’s decision in Baker v. Carr does not turn its back on MacDougall and like settled precedents. That must inescapably include the statement in MacDougall to the effect that political power is not a function exclusively of numbers and that the court would not deny to a State the power to *217assure a proper diffusion of political initiative as between its thinly populated areas and those having concentrated masses, inasmuch as the latter carry a political weight at the polls not available to the former.
Mention is made of Giddings v. Secretary of State, 93 Mich 1 (16 LRA 402), and Williams v. Secretary of State, 145 Mich 447. They held invalid apportionments made which were not in conformity with the requirements of the State Constitution in effect at that time for apportionment on a population basis. They are not determinative of the question of the validity of the relevant provision of the State Constitution now in effect.
When the framers of the Constitution of the United States provided for what they deemed to be a republican form of government, and guaranteed it equally to the States, they attempted no innovation with respect to formation of a congress composed of a house of representatives, to be elected approximately according to population, and a senate, consisting of members selected on a different basis, namely, 2 from each State regardless of the respective geographical sizes or populations of the States. They were following the pattern for legislative apportionment already in effect in the States, as it has been ever since in most of the States. That this was not through inadvertence but by design is evident enough from writings of the time when the Constitution was adopted and the course of action pursued since then throughout the country. The following excerpts from The Federalist are enlightening on the subject:
“It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaith*218ful to their important trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government. It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of 2 distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient. This is a precaution founded on such clear principles, and now so well understood in the United States, that it would be more than superfluous to enlarge on it. I will barely remark, that as the improbability of sinister combinations will be in proportion to the dissimilarity in the genius of the 2 bodies, it must be politic to distinguish them from each other by every circumstance which will consist with a due harmony in all proper measures, and with the genuine principles of republican government.” Paper No 62.
Paper No 63- contains this statement:
“It may be suggested, that a people spread over an extensive region cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures. I am far from denying that this is a distinction of peculiar importance. I have, on the contrary, endeavored in a former paper to show, that it is one of the principal recommendations of a confederated republic.”
In Paper No 51 the following is stated:
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. * * * "Whilst all authority in it (Federal republic) will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself *219will be broken, into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that tbe rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.”
The above was preceded by the following:
“But it is not possible to give each department an equal power of self-defence. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and diferent principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”
These writings are indicative of the spirit and purpose that occasioned the method of congressional and legislative apportionment then existing in States, adopted for the Federal government and followed throughout the United States from then until the present.
Checks and balances and a diffusion of governmental powers have been the genius of our system and the mainstay of the liberties of the people and our free institutions throughout our national history. Whether it be those inhering in a Federal system with a division between and assignment of powers to the central government over subjects of national concern and reservation to sovereign States of those of a State and local character, or in the separation of powers between the 3 branches of the government in both the National and the State governmental structures, or in the creation of a bicameral legislative branch, with each house a check on the other, our people have continued to recognize in them the bastions of our freedoms. These are irritants, of course, to those, impatient of what they *220deem to be the delays of democratic processes, who seek the greater efficiency, speed and forceful action said to be characteristic of governments with unfettered powers. Not so for those who continue in their devotion as defenders of freedom.
These, it is evident, were the considerations which prompted the people of Michigan in 1952 to adopt by a majority of almost 300,000 the present constitutional amendment for senatorial apportionment and to reject, at the same election, by an almost half-million-vote majority, a proposed amendment to apportion both houses according to population. Rid the people, in their efforts to preserve a system of checks and balances partly for the purpose of protecting the interests of minorities in sparsely populated areas against organized blocs in metropolitan areas, thus create a system of senatorial apportionment so unreasonable, irrational, and discriminating as to violate the spirit of the equal protection clause 1 I am persuaded that they did not. To quote from the conclusion of the brief of intervening defendants:
“Article 5 of our State Constitution, as amended in 1952, merely establishes a reasonable, rational, and permissible system of checks and balances in State government. It has been said that ‘liberty means definitely limiting the power of the sovereign, whether that sovereign be a king or a majority,’ and it is the genius of the American people that in formulating their Constitutions, they chose ‘to guard against excesses’ of such majority, and to exercise voluntary self restraint.”
Interestingly enough, the present constitutional provision does not, as sometimes thought, provide for an apportionment and election of senators on merely an area basis. Area is a factor, but representation in the senate is very considerably weighted toward the population concept. It is not under rural control. Out of the total of 34 senators, *22120 represent urban areas containing urban communities of 100,000 or more persons. Sixty-four per cent of the senators represent approximately 1/3 of the area—that is, the more populous area—of the State. The senate apportionment is manifestly a combination of the population and area considerations, with compromise and adjustment to insure a check and balance system for the protection of all sections of the State and, as well, of all people within it. The Constitution of the United States was and is a compromise. The Constitution of the State of Michigan is a compromise. The history of representative government in this country and elsewhere is a history of compromise. It is under despotism that the necessity for compromise ceases. Unlimited monarchs, dictators and other absolute rulers often have felt no need to bother with compromise. The same might be true under a system styled by Jefferson as an “elective despotism”, where majority rule is unfettered by constitutional restraints. Not so here where constitutional guaranties and the cheeks and balances of governmental structures are expressly designed to protect minorities and individuals against unrestrained majorities.
When the object and purpose of combining both population and area factors into an apportionment formula are to afford the checks and balances so essential to continued freedom and protection of the different peoples and sections of the State, it is no valid criticism to say that neither population nor area equality or uniformity was accomplished, so long as that main object and purpose of checks and balances and preservation of rights of minorities and those in sparsely populated areas are subserved. Such is the result obtained in Michigan under the existing State constitutional provision.
*222The analogy of the Federal congress is dubbed inapt. Point is made that the Constitution of the United States was a' compact between sovereign States which would not have agreed upon union without the compromise providing for equal representation in the senate for each State regardless of population or size, while, in contrast, local units of government in Michigan are creatures of the State which are not and never were sovereign entities whose consent was essential to formation of the State. This overlooks, incidentally, the subsequent admission to the Union, on the same senate apportionment basis, of 37 States which, with the exception of Texas, had not been equal sovereignties subscribing to a compact. Regardless of all that, however, and whatever may be the historic reasons and distinctions, in practical, everyday operation, the effects and consequences to the rights of people resulting from senate apportionment on a nonpopulation basis are the same whether it exists in the Federal or State government. Even though the Federal senate apportionment in disregard of population is constitutional because of the express provision for it in article 1, § 3, and the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to the Federal government, it constitutes no more, but certainly no less, a denial of the equal protection of the laws to people than does such apportionment to a State senate. This Court, today, in effect, may announce that' present apportionment to the United States senate works a constitutionally permissible denial of the equal protection of the laws to people. It is an announcement in which I do not join.
I concur with Mr. Chief Justice Carr’s opinion in its entirety and in his conclusion that plaintiff’s petition should be dismissed.
*223Carr, C. J., and Kelly, J., concurred -with'Dethmers, J.