Public Law in the State Courts in 1926–1927

Robert E. Cushman

American Political Science Review, 1927, vol. 21, issue 3, 573-597

Abstract: Legislative Apportionment. The problem of the representation of large cities or metropolitan districts in state legislatures is becoming increasingly difficult and acute. The number of states in which a single center of population is with each census approaching a size which entitles it, on the basis of its inhabitants, to a controlling proportion of the representatives in the state legislature grows steadily as the current of population toward the city continues to flow. Certain states have dealt with this situation by frankly and openly discriminating against these metropolitan areas by specifying that they shall never be entitled to more than a fixed percentage of the representatives. The constitutions of certain other states do not permit this, however, but require that after each decennial census a total fixed number of members in the legislative body shall be allotted equally to districts of equal population. If this is done the metropolis is guaranteed under each apportionment the increase in representation to which its proportionate increase in population entitles it. And the answer volunteered to this problem by several state legislatures has been steadily to refuse to reapportion the state.

Date: 1927
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