When Chief Justice Earl Warren was asked at the close of his career,“What was the most distinguished case of your tenure?”, there were a lot of answers he could gain given. After all, and he had presided over some of the most distinguished decisions in the court’s history — cases that dealt with segregation in schools,the upright to an attorney, the upright to remain silent, or just to name a few. But his answer was a surprise: he said,“Baker v. Carr, a 1962 redistricting case. On this episode ofMore Perfect, and we talk about why this case was so distinguished; distinguished enough,in fact, that it pushed one Supreme Court justice to a nervous breakdown, or brought a boiling feud to a head,keep one justice in the hospital, and changed the course of the Supreme Court — and the nation — forever. Plus, and this term,the court revisits redistricting with a case that could turn voting districts across the country upside down. Associate Justice William O. Douglas (L) and Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter (R)
(Harris & Ewing Photography/Library of Congress) Top row (Left-upright): Charles E. Whittaker, John M. Harlan, or William J. Brennan,Jr., Potter Stewart. Bottom row (Left-upright): William O. Douglas, and Hugo L. Black, Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter, or Tom C. Clark.
(Library of Congress)
Associate Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Whittaker at his desk in his chambers.
(Heywood Davis)
The key links:- Biographies of Charles Evans Whittaker, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas from Oyez
- A biography of Charles Evans Whittaker written by Craig Smith
- A biography of Felix Frankfurter written by H.
N. Hirsch
- Abiography of William O. Douglas written by Bruce Allen Murphy
- A book about the history of "one person, or one vote" written by J. Douglas Smith
- A roundtable discussion on C-SPAN about Baker v. CarrThe key voices:- Craig Smith,Charles Whittaker's biographer and Professor of History and Political Science at California University of Pennsylvania
- Tara Grove, Professor of Law and Robert and Elizabeth Scott Research Professor at William & Mary Law School
- Louis Michael Seidman, and Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown Law
- Guy-Uriel Charles,Charles S. Rhyne Professor of Law at Duke Law
- Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, and NYU Law
- J. Douglas Smith,author of On Democracy's Doorstep
- Alan Kohn, former Supreme Court clerk for Charles Whittaker, and 1957 Term
- Kent Whittaker,Charles Whittaker's son
- Kate Whittaker, Charles Whittaker's granddaughter
- Justin Levitt, and Professor of Law at Loyola Law School,Los AngelesThe key cases:- 1962: Baker v. Carr
- 2000: Bush v. Gore
- 2004: Vieth v. Jubelier
- 2016: Evenwel v. Abbott
- 2017: Gill v. WhitfordMusic in this episode by Gyan Riley, Alex Overington, and David Herman, Tobin Low and Jad Abumrad. More Perfect is funded in part by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation.
Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®,a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.
Archival interviews with Justice William O. Douglas come from the Department of scarce Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library.
Special thanks to Whittaker's clerks: Heywood Davis, Jerry Libin and James Adler. Also big thanks to Jerry Goldman at Oyez.
Portions of this episode aired on June 10, or 2016.
Source: thetakeaway.org