William O. Douglas

“ Here it is the unmistakable duty of the State Legislature to reapportion itself periodically in accordance with recent population changes. . . . Early in January, 1959, the 61st Session of the Minnesota Legislature will convene, all of the members of which will be newly elected on November 4th of this year. The facts which have been presented to us will be available to them. It is not to be presumed that the Legislature will refuse to take such action as is necessary to comply with its duty under the State Constitution. ”

“ Regardless of the fact that, in the last two decades, the United States has become a predominantly urban country where well over two-thirds of the population now lives in cities or suburbs, political representation in the majority of state legislatures is 50 or more years behind the times. Apportionments made when the greater part of the population was located in rural communities are still determining and undermining our elections. ”

“ It is ludicrous to preclude judicial relief when a mainspring of representative government is impaired. Legislators have no immunity from the Constitution. The legislatures of our land should be made as responsive to the Constitution of the United States as are the citizens who elect the legislators. With the exceptions of Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549; MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281; South v. Peters, 339 U.S. 276, and the decisions they spawned, the Court has never thought that protection of voting rights [p250] was beyond judicial cognizance. ”

“ It would be alarming enough to sanction here an unlimited power, exercised either by legislatures, or the executive, or courts, when all our governments are themselves governments of limitations and checks, and of fixed and known laws, and the people a race above all others jealous of encroachments by those in power. ”

“ And it is far better that those persons should be without the protection of the ordinary laws of the land who disregard them in an emergency, and should look to a grateful country for indemnity and pardon, than to allow, beforehand, the whole frame of jurisprudence to be overturned, and every thing placed at the mercy of the bayonet. ”

“ No tribunal or department in our system of governments ever can be lawfully authorized to dispense with the laws, like some of the tyrannical Stuarts, or to repeal, or abolish, or suspend the whole body of them ”

“ These demands will become even greater by 1970, when some 150 million people will be living in urban areas. The National Institute of Municipal Law Officers has for many years recognized the widespread complaint that, by far the greatest preponderance of state representatives and senators are from rural areas which, in the main, fail to become vitally interested in the increasing difficulties now facing urban administrators. Since World War II, the explosion in city and suburban population has created intense local problems in education, transportation, and housing. ”

“ Some make the same point as regards the problem of equal protection in cases involving racial segregation. Yet the legality of claims and conduct is a traditional subject for judicial determination. Adjudication is often perplexing and complicated. ”

“ We are told that a single vote in Moore County, Tennessee, is worth 19 votes in Hamilton County, that one vote in Stewart or in Chester County is worth nearly eight times a single vote in Shelby or Knox County. The opportunity to prove that an "invidious discrimination" exists should therefore be given the appellants. ”

“ Whatever stretches of such power may be ventured on in great crises, they cannot be upheld by the laws, as they prostrate the laws and ride triumphant over and beyond them, however the Assembly of Rhode Island, under the exigency, may have hastily supposed that such a measure in this instance was constitutional. ”

“ Northampton Election Board, 360 U.S. 45, 50-51. Yet, as stated in Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 663-664, those who vote for members of Congress do not "owe their right to vote to the State law in any sense which makes the exercise of the right to depend exclusively on the law of the State." The power of Congress to prescribe the qualifications for voters, and thus override state law, is not in issue here. It is, however, clear that, by reason of the commands of the Constitution, there are several qualifications that a State may not require. ”

“ Stanton, supra, expresses a philosophy at war with Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, and Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304. The dominance of the civilian authority has been expressed from the beginning. See Wise v. ”