Legislative district

“ Why does the Court not require that the number of trustees be increased from six, in order to reduce the roughness with which equality is approximated? Would a three-man board be unconstitutionally small? Why is the Court willing to accept inequality that derives from a desire to give representation to component school districts, when similar inequality in state legislative districting could probably not be justified by a desire to give representation to counties? ”

“ I strongly deprecate legislation looking to the election of a Territorial legislature in that vast district. The lack of permanence of residence of a large part of the present population and the small number of the people who either permanently or temporarily reside in the district as compared with its vast expanse and the variety of the interests that have to be subserved, make it altogether unfitting in my judgment to provide for a popular election of a legislative body. The present system is not adequate and does not furnish the character of local control that ought to be there. ”

“ The people of this District have no legislative body of their own, and must confide their local as well as their general interests to representatives in whose election they have no voice and over whose official conduct they have no control. ”

“ But the legislative assembly, created by the organic act, had authority to legislate for the entire District; and the board of public works had the same authority over the roads of the District as they had over the streets and avenues in the city. They had, throughout the District, the same power to make assessments for improvements. The assessment of which the bill complains was made by the board, and it was one of those which were confirmed and ordered to be enforced by the act of Congress of June 19, 1878. The bill of the complainant cannot, therefore, be sustained. ”

“ The legislative assembly also is a large edition of a common council, and is the especial power and organ of the municipality in regulating its ordinary business and affairs.
The thirty-seventh section defines and locates the power to regulate and repair the streets and highways of the District of Columbia. The persons there referred to are invested with the entire control of the streets, their regulation and repair. ”

“ It is expressive of the more general proposition that any group with distinctive interests must be represented in legislative halls if it is numerous enough to command at least one seat and represents a majority living in an area sufficiently compact to constitute a single-member district. ”

“ When population shifts required that some towns receive a greater portion of seats on the county legislature, Rockland County responded with a plan that substantially remedies the malapportionment and that, by preserving an exact correspondence between each town and one of the county legislative districts, continues to encourage town supervisors to serve on the county board. ”

“ By holding that as a federal constitutional requisite both houses of a state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis, we mean that the Equal Protection Clause requires that a State make an honest and good faith effort to construct districts, in both houses of its legislature, as nearly of equal population as is practicable. We realize that it is a practical impossibility to arrange legislative districts so that each one has an identical number of residents, or citizens, or voters. ”

“ The prospective validity of the plan for the 1975 elections, absent legislative action, poses different issues, but we need not decide those questions at the present time. Under the District Court plan, approximately one-fifth of the seats in both Houses were filled by at-large elections from temporary countywide districts in 1971. ”

“ An elected mayor or an appointed mayor derives his authority to act from the same source; to wit, that of the legislature. The whole municipal authority emanates from the legislature. Its legislative charter indicates its extent, and regulates the distribution of its powers as well as the manner of selecting and compensating its agents. The judges of the Supreme Court of a State may be appointed by the governor with the consent of the senate, or they may be elected by the people. ”

“ That all that portion of territory lying on the Red River, including the settlements of Pembina and St. Joseph, shall constitute the seventh council district of Dakota, and shall be entitled to one councilman, and two representatives in the legislative assembly of this territory. ”

“ The need for exacting judicial scrutiny of statutes distributing the franchise is undiminished simply because, under a different statutory scheme, the offices subject to election might have been filled through appointment. [11] States do have latitude in determining whethe certain public officials shall be selected by election or chosen by appointment and whether various questions shall be submitted to the voters. In fact, we have held that where a county school board is an administrative, not legislative, body, its members need not be elected. ”

“ To secure this result, each state is divided into election districts presumably of as nearly equal population as possible, the senatorial districts being the larger. In practice, however, these districts do not always have representation proportional to their population. The county is often the unit of representation, or in New England the town, and these districts vary greatly in population. An attempt is made to equalize the difference by providing that no district shall have less than one representative, and often that none shall have more than a certain number. ”

“ Despite the absence of any specific provisions in the State Constitution, population has generally been traditionally regarded as the most important factor for legislative consideration in reapportioning and redistricting. Because cities and counties have consistently not been split or divided for purposes of legislative representation, multimember districts have been utilized for cities and counties whose populations entitle them to more than a single representative, resulting in there always being less than 100 delegate districts and less than 40 senatorial districts. ”

“ Every clerk, sheriff, coroner, constable, county commissioner, justice of the peace, recorder, county surveyor, attorney-general, or district attorney, who shall be guilty of any palpable omission of duty, or who shall wilfully or corruptly be guilty of oppression, malfeasance, or partiality in the discharge of his official duties, shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined in a sum not exceeding two hundred dollars, and the court shall have power, upon the recommendation of the jury, to add to the judgment of the court, that any officer so convicted, shall be removed from office. ”

“ That any person twenty-one years of age, who can produce satisfactory evidence of a good moral character, and pass an examination before either of the judges of the district court, or before the judges of the supreme court of this territory, shall be licensed to practise as attorney at law and solicitor in chancery in all the courts of the territory. ”

“ The Supreme Court has rarely spoken with greater clarity. Once it is determined (as it has been in the instant case) that the Movants' actions fall within the "legitimate legislative sphere," judicial inquiry is at an end. Otherwise, Members of Congress conducting investigations would be forced to consider at every turn whether evidence received pursuant to the investigation would subsequently have to be produced in court. This would "imperil" the legislative independence protected by the Clause. ”

“ And that nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prevent the legislature of any state to pass laws, from time to time, to divide such state into as many convenient districts as the state shall be entitled to elect representatives for Congress, nor to prevent such legislature from making provision, that the electors in each district shall choose a citizen of the United States, who shall have been an inhabitant of the district, for the term of one year immediately preceding the time of his election, for one of the representatives of such state. ”

“ Reviewing the complaint and all other materials before the court, there are no allegations that Lifespring or any of the other defendants represented themselves to be psychologists or that they intended to engage in psychology. Thus, reading the statute and the legislative history, there is no indication that Congress intended to extend the benefit of the statute to the class of persons including plaintiffs. Even if plaintiffs' class were covered by the Act, plaintiffs have failed to show that Congress affirmatively created a private right of action as a means to enforce the law. ”

“ As under the next appropriation New York loses a representative in Congress, it became necessary to make a new division of the State into Congressional districts. Of the 33 members to which the State will be entitled, taking the vote for Governor at the late election as a criterion, the Whigs will elect 20, the Democrats 13. The Whig majority for Governor was but 262. In the present Congress the members are equally divided between the parties. The gain to the Whigs has been effected by classing together, in several cases, into one district, counties in which the Democratic majority is large. ”

“ We are told that the representatives will not be known to the people, nor the people to the representatives, because they will be taken from large districts, where they cannot be particularly acquainted. There has been some experience, in several of the states* upon this subject; and I believe the experience of all who had experience, demonstrates that the larger the district of election, the better the representation. It is only in remote corners of a government that little demagogues arise. ”

“ Suppose, however, that the municipality be large enough to be readily divided into as many wieldy districts as there are commissioners to the number of from five to nine. For instance, let us assume a city of to exceed 25,000 male voters and a population exceeding 150,000. Here the district is too unwieldy for the election at large of those candidates receiving the highest votes at a single election. It may be doubted whether the double election will produce satisfactory results in the way of securing a really intelligent vote. ”

“ Any man who shall have been imprisoned ninety days for having failed to comply with the orders of the district court, as provided in this chapter, shall have the benefit of the law for the relief of prisoners committed on execution issued for the collection of fines in criminal cases. ”

“ The requirement that districts shall be of nearly equal population has often been disregarded altogether. Since the state legislature is controlled by the political party having a majority, the dominant party can arrange the district lines so as to secure a party majority in the greatest possible number of districts. ”

“ It is contrived to create one district, the 17th Congressional District, which excludes non-white citizens and citizens of Puerto Rican origin and which is over-represented in comparison to the other three districts in the County of New York. ”

“ The candidates, it has been said, would require as many committees as there are boroughs, and other things in proportion. The objection cannot weigh much with reference to the particular question, since every other mode of forming district constituencies would be liable to it in an equal, if not a greater degree. No elections are free from it, except those for single, and even for small, towns: for if the town is of any size, the candidates have almost always a plurality of committees for the different quarters or divisions. ”

“ Appellants now challenge the constitutionality of the court's plan, contending that a total variance of 18.9% between the largest and smallest Senate district and one of 19.7% between the largest and smallest House district require that the court's districting plan be voided, a new plan instituted, and new elections held. ”