Fair Representation

Fair Representation was the phrase Chief Justice Earl Warren used to respond to Justice Felix Frankfurter's warning that courts should stay out of the political thicket of reapportionment cases. The phrase comes from Reynolds v. Sims (1964), where Warren declared “fair and effective representation for all citizens” to be “the basic aim of legislative apportionment” (pp. 565–566).

Although fair and effective representation in governmental bodies (Gaffney v. Cummings, 1973) is a goal to be achieved under the Constitution, what it consists of is not readily obvious. In fact, debate over this very point was perhaps the most contentious issue of the Constitutional Convention.

In Reynolds v. Sims, the Court established that population is “the criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies” (p. 567). Despite considerable criticism that this simplistically ignores many other valid bases for representation, and that even the Court's insistence upon mathematical equality leads to unfair and ineffective representation, the Court has persisted in using population as the almost exclusive standard for judging fair and effective representation. It has supplemented this, however, by holding that even with equal population districts, racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional; it has also declared partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional. (The Court has been unable to define the term “partisan gerrymandering” with precision.)

Fair and effective representation has thus come to serve as a shorthand conclusion for those who support judicial supervision of how representation is effected, whereas concern about the “political thicket” is identified with those who have apprehensions about judicial intervention in these controversial and difficult matters.

See also Vote, Right to.

J. W. Peltason

; revised by

Grant Hayden