Some Are More Equal

Two decisions by the Warren Court are widely accepted as landmarks, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and Baker v. Carr in 1962. These cases drastically changed the status quo in the United States, the first in the area of segregation of school facilities and the second in the apportionment of legislatures. Many, many other cases have been brought in attempts to evade, challenge, or clarify these decisions, and have resulted in other decisions that effectively extended the range of their operation deep into the political system of the country. On the face of it education and apportionment have nothing in common, but a quick analysis of decisions in these areas reveals something else.

In Brown, the Court reversed the 1896 holding in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites was not a violation of the Constitution; Brown defined separate facilities as inherently unequal. In Baker v. Carr the Court for the first time took jurisdiction in a reapportionment case involving differences in representation between urban and rural districts in a state legislature. It declared that legislative districts that were not as nearly equal as possible in population were a violation of the “equal protection of the laws” provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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Bruce Odom

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Two decisions by the Warren Court are widely accepted as landmarks, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and Baker v. Carr in 1962. These cases drastically changed the status quo in the United States, the first in the area of segregation of school facilities and the second in the apportionment of legislatures. Many, many other cases have been brought in attempts to evade, challenge, or clarify these decisions, and have resulted in other decisions that effectively extended the range of their operation deep into the political system of the country. On the face of it education and apportionment have nothing in common, but a quick analysis of decisions in these areas reveals something else.

In Brown, the Court reversed the 1896 holding in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites was not a violation of the Constitution; Brown defined separate facilities as inherently unequal. In Baker v. Carr the Court for the first time took jurisdiction in a reapportionment case involving differences in representation between urban and rural districts in a state legislature. It declared that legislative districts that were not as nearly equal as possible in population were a violation of the “equal protection of the laws” provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.