4. Laws and Cases

 

4.1 The Apportionment Act of 1842

The Apportionment Act of 1842 was passed by the Twenty-Seventh Congress and signed into law on June 25, 1842. It was the first federal statute to mandate that Representatives be elected from single-member geographic districts. The relevant provision read as follows:

 

"That in every case where a State is entitled to more than one Representative, the number to which each State shall be entitled under this apportionment shall be elected by districts composed of contiguous territory equal in number to the number of Representatives to which said State may be entitled, no one district electing more than one Representative."

 

Prior to this Act, states had used a variety of methods to elect their Representatives, including at-large elections, general ticket systems, and multi-member districts. The Act ended that variety by imposing a uniform single-member district requirement on all states with more than one Representative.

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4.2 Wesberry v. Sanders (1964)

Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), is the Supreme Court case most frequently cited in connection with the constitutional basis of congressional districts. The case originated in Georgia, where congressional districts varied dramatically in population - the Fifth District of Atlanta contained nearly three times the population of the Ninth District.

 

The Supreme Court held, in a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Hugo Black, that Article I, Section 2's requirement that Representatives be chosen "by the People of the several States" mandates that congressional districts be as nearly equal in population as practicable. The Court's ruling established the principle of one person, one vote as applied to congressional elections.

 

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, arguing that the Court's reading of Article I, Section 2, was historically unsupported and that Article I, Section 4, vested authority over congressional districting in Congress and the states rather than the courts.

 

The case addressed a specific and narrow question - whether districts of unequal population violated the principle of equal representation. It did not address, and was never asked to address, whether the district system itself is constitutionally legitimate.

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