Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Baker v. Carr

The ideal of one person, one vote motivated the founders of the United States of America to establish a census when they drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Although that ideal has not yet been fully realized—because the census still undercounts racial and ethnic minorities, among others—the country took a giant step closer to equal representation for every citizen nearly two centuries later, during the era of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. On March 26, 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S. Ct. 691, 7 L. Ed. 2d 663 (1962), that state congressional districts of unequal size were unconstitutional. In a ruling that Chief Justice EARL WARREN later called the most important of his tenure on the Court, Justice WILLIAM J. BRENNAN JR....