Court Opinion

ID: 9757362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:36:34.084743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:38.661494
License: Public Domain

Barnes, J.,
filed the following opinion, concurring in the result.
I concur in the result in this case because I recognize—as I must—that the Supreme Court of the United States in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed. 663 (1962) and in subsequent cases, including Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964) has, contrary to its previous decisions, held that alleged malapportionment of seats in the houses of a state legislature on a population basis presents a justiciable issue in the courts under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and further that if there is representation in those houses by districts, representation must be based upon a substantially equal arithmetical division of population. This latter dogma is the so-called “one man, one vote” principle—a designation I think unfortunate and rather deceptive as I will point out later. I pointed out in my dissenting opinion in Hughes v. Maryland Comm. for Fair Representation, 241 Md. 471, 491, 217 A. 2d 273, 285 (1966) the reasons why I think the decisions in Baker v. Carr and subsequent cases following it, were erroneous and fraught with grave danger to the foundations of our federal republic. These reasons were brilliantly and, to my mind, completely articulated in the *651dissenting opinions of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Harlan in Baker. They need not be repeated here.
The dilemma presented to- a judge of the highest appellate court of a State arises from his oath to support and defend both the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of his State. In view of the supremacy clause of the Constitution of the United States, it is clear that when the provisions of that document conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of a State, the former must control and further that the interpretation of the meaning of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States by the Supreme Court must be given effect by the judges of the State courts upon the principle of stare decisis—a principle of the essence of the judicial process. When, however, the Supreme Court itself in the first case construing a provision of the United States Constitution and in a number of decisions applying the principle established by that first case, has held that a provision of the United States Constitution does not apply to the States or does not present a justiciable issue because political in nature, and with a due regard for the provisions of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, does the doctrine of stare decisis properly apply to decisions of the Supreme Court in which a bare majority of that Court, itself, declines to follow the doctrine of stare decisis?1 I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that we are not free to refuse to apply the doctrine of stare decisis even though the Supreme Court has departed from that doctrine. The remedy lies with the people and their *652representatives in Congress and not with us. This conclusion is a heavy burden and painful yoke which must be borne, but it need not be borne willingly and with silent submission. Indeed, as I have already indicated in my concurring opinion in the recent case of Truitt v. Board of Public Works, 243 Md. 375, 411, 221 A. 2d 370, 392 (1966), I believe it to be the duty of appellate judges of the several States to point out, in all cases where relevant, their opinion of the errors of the Supreme Court and the unfortunate effects of these errors. In no case should these errors be extended by the State courts.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his dissent in Baker, clearly pointed out that by its decision in that case, the majority of the Supreme Court would cause the judiciary to enter a “political thicket.” His prophesy has come to pass, with unfortunate results to State-Federal relationships and with grave danger to the judicial branches of both the State and Federal Governments. The policy in Maryland for many years has been to separate the Courts from politics and, on the whole, the effort has been successful. It is a step backward, in my opinion, to plunge the Courts into the most political situation of all—the determination of the nature and extent of districts for representation in the legislative branch of government. The doctrine of the separation of powers between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government—a most important protection for the freedom of the citizen—clearly indicates to me that Courts should not attempt to adjudicate in this essentially legislative and political area. Mr. Justice Frankfurter said in his dissenting opinion in Baker v. Carr:
“The Court today reverses a uniform course of decision established by a dozen cases, including one by which -the very claim now sustained was unanimously rejected only five years ago. The impressive body of rulings thus cast aside reflected the equally uniform course of our political history regarding the relationship between population and legislative representation—a wholly different matter from denial of the franchise to individuals because of race, color, religion or sex. Such a massive' repudiation of the experience of our whole past in asserting destructively novel judicial *653power demands a detailed analysis of the role of this Court in our constitutional scheme. Disregard of inherent limits in the effective exercise of the Court’s ‘judicial Power’ not only presages the futility of judicial intervention in the essentially political conflict of forces by which the relation between population and representation has time out of mind been and now is determined. It may well impair the Court’s position as the ultimate organ of ‘the supreme Law of the Land’ in that vast range of legal problems, often strongly entangled in popular feeling, on which this Court must pronounce. The Court’s authority—possessed of neither the purse nor the sword—ultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction. Such feeling must be nourished by the Court’s complete detachment, in fact and in appearance, from political entanglements and by abstention from injecting itself into the clash of political forces in political settlements.” (Pages 266-267 of 369 U.S.).
A proper humility should lead the majority of the Supreme Court to return to the more orthodox constitutional doctrines, of their predecessors, and failing that, should lead the peoples’ representatives in the legislative branch to take appropriate steps to remove what is to my mind, an unwarranted interference with the legislative power.
The situation is aggravated by the insistence by the majority of the Supreme Court in imposing one of several theories of representative government upon the legislative branch, namely, that of arithmetical equality of population when representation is based on districts. There are many other well recognized and previously practiced theories of representative government among the several States, in the government of the United1 States, itself, and in England. Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his-dissent in Baker v. Carr, reviews the application of these theories in pages 301 to 324 of 369 U. S. and they need not be reviewed here. Mr. Justice Frankfurter summarized the matter as follows:
“The notion that representation proportioned to the geographic spread of population is so universally ac*654cepted as a necessary element of equality between man and man that it must be taken to be the standard of a political equality preserved by the Fourteenth Amendment—that it is, in appellants’ words ‘the basic principle of representative government’—is, to put it bluntly, not true. However desirable and however desired by some among the great political thinkers and framers of our government, it has never been generally practiced, today or in the past. It was not the English system, it was not the colonial system, it was not the system chosen for the national government by the Constitution, it was not the system exclusively or even predominantly practiced by the States at the time of adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is not predominantly practiced by the States today.” (Page 301 of 369 U.S.).
The mere counting of heads in districts from time to time regardless of the number or qualifications of electors, the social, economic and other factors involved, appears to many to be the least desirable, the most arbitrary and the most inconvenient of all of the theories of representative government, yet it has become—temporarily one hopes—a rigid principle of federal constitutional law applicable to all fifty States. This destroys one of the great advantages of our federal system, i.e., the ability of the several States to experiment with the various theories of representative government with the hope that as a result of experience, the best system of such government will finally he demonstrated by experience and adopted by the people of the States as and when they decide to adopt it for their particular State. As Mr. Justice Stewart aptly stated in his dissenting opinion in Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S. 713, 748-749, 84 S.Ct. 1113, 12 L.Ed.2d 89 (1964) :
“What the Court has done is to convert a particular political philosophy into a constitutional rule, binding upon each of the 50 States, from Maine to Hawaii, from Alaska to Texas, without regard and without respect for the many individualized and differentiated characteristics of each State, characteris*655tics stemming from each State’s distinct history, distinct geography, distinct distribution of population, and distinct political heritage. My own understanding of the various theories of representative government is that no one theory has ever commanded unanimous assent among political scientists, historians, or others who have considered the problem. But even if it were thought that the rule announced today by the Court is, as a matter of political theory, the most desirable general rule which can be devised as a basis for the make-up of the representative assembly of a typical State, I could not join in the fabrication of a constitutional mandate which imports and forever freezes one theory of political thought into our Constitution, and forever denies to every State any opportunity for enlightened and progressive innovation in the design of its democratic institutions, so as to accommodate within a system of representative government the interests and aspirations of diverse groups of people, without subjecting any group or class to absolute domination by a geographically concentrated or highly organized majority.”
Then too, the elimination of the protection of minorities who reside in sparsely settled areas will inevitably lead to political discontent resulting from the silencing of voices which should be heard in the legislative halls. The silencing and political suppression of minorities by a strict application of the head-counting process is not, in my opinion, the best way to secure the individual liberties of the citizen which the American constitutional system was designed to promote. It is somewhat odd that the arithmetically equal population system should have been the one selected by the present majority of the Supreme Court for imposition upon the States.
This curious system is now quite generally called the “one man, one vote” principle. I think this title is a misnomer as it rather obscures the real nature of the principle, which might more accurately be called the “arithmetically equal population” principle. I am not acquainted with any system of representative government in which every man necessarily has one vote *656or in which a man otherwise entitled to vote has more than one vote or a fraction of one vote. Then too, women vote and may not be deprived of their suffrage by reason of their sex by virtue of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.2
I agree fully with the statement of Mr. Justice Harlan in his dissenting opinion in Reynolds v. Sims:
“* * * I think it demonstrable that the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose this political tenet on the States or authorize the Court to do so.” 377 U. S. at 590, 84 S. Ct. at 1396, 12 L. Ed. 2d at 544.
I concede that if the decisions in Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims are to be applied—as unhappily they must be— the opinion of the Court logically and properly applies those decisions in the case at bar. I, therefore, concur in the result.

. The case of Maryland Committee v. Tawes, 228 Md. 412, 180 A.2d 656 (1963) presented an aspect of this problem, as a specific provision of the Maryland Constitution in regard to the allocation of delegates and senators among the political subdivisions of the State, was challenged as being inconsistent with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution as recently interpreted by the Supreme Court—contrary to the prior decisions of that Court. The majority of the Court of Appeals determined that it had the power and the duty to declare a specific provision of the Maryland Constitution unconstitutional under these circumstances. The dissenting opinion by Judge Henderson, concurred in by Judge Horney, were of the opinion that this could not be done. See 228 Md. at 441, 180 A.2d at 673. In my opinion the dissenting opinion presented the proper application of the law.

. The “one man, one vote” designation is apparently an adaptation of the statement in the opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas in Gray v. Saunders, 372 U.S. 368, 381, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963) in which he indicated that the equal protection clause required “one person, one vote” (emphasis supplied). Mr. Justice Clark in his concurring opinion in Reynolds v. Sims, supra, refers to it as the “equal population” principle, which, to my mind, is a more accurate designation of the principle than that stated by Mr. Justice Douglas. As I have indicated, I prefer the designation as the “arithmetically equal population” principle.