The Supreme Court was established as the final arbiter of the law, tasked with guarding and interpreting the Constitution. This interpretation is supposed to be based on the writings of the founding fathers in the Constitution, but over the years, it has gotten more politicized, with political opinions and viewpoints of the justices becoming a forefront in their decision making. One Supreme Court case that exemplifies this political turn is Baker v. Carr, heard by the Warren Court in 1962. This case was over the apportionment of legislative seats in Tennessee who had not updated their voting districts to reflect the population in many years. This lack of reapportionment made it so that predominantly white citizens in more rural areas had much more of a say in electing legislators than the predominantly black citizens in the cities. This case was argued in front of the court, and ultimately the majority came to the conclusion that Tennessee had to reapportion its legislative seats. While the case ended with a large majority of 6-2, the dissent by Justice Frankfurter was what ultimately left a legacy predicting the court’s further politicization. In his dissent, Frankfurter argued that in hearing this case, the court was making an inherently political decision as districting is supposed to be determined by the legislature, not the courts. Frankfurter believed that when the legislature needed updating it was their job to handle this, not the responsibility of the courts. Frankfurter believed that in making a decision that was supposed to be left up to the legislature; the courts were crossing into the political realm that they could never step back from. Frankfurter even went as far as to predict that if the court sided with the citizens, in this case, they would later be forced to make even more political decisions like who the president is.
Frankfurter’s prediction came into fruition in 2000 when the court was, in fact, tasked with deciding the next president of the United States in Bush v. Gore. So here we are 233 years after the court was established to interpret the Constitution and maintain a balance of power, watching them make fundamentally political decisions. But why is this so bad? How is the Supreme Court making political decisions anti-democratic? A democracy is a representative form of government, meaning those in power are representatives of the people and are supposed to be the people’s voice, according to Joseph Schumpeter in his book “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”. Supreme Court justices are not representatives; they are not voted or decided on by the public but are appointed to their position by the president. Their loyalties are to the president, and their viewpoints and opinions are representative of the president that appointed them, not necessarily the general consensus of the majority of Americans. If the Supreme Court operated as it was initially designed, an interpreter of the Constitution, the fact that it is not a representative body would not be a problem as it would not be making political decisions, but as I have demonstrated, that is not the case today. The court is a non-representative body with the power to make political decisions and inherently anti-democratic practices.
So now what? What if we went back and redid Baker v. Carr with Frankfurter’s preferred outcome of redistricting being a solely legislative issue? Well, if history is rewritten with the courts staying out of legislative districting, widespread gerrymandering would still continue. In his dissent, Frankfurter argued that because districting is a political issue, if citizens have a problem with it, they should take it to the polls and elect legislators who are going to fix it. But what Frankfurter’s argument neglects to acknowledge is that those with the motivation to change the districts do not have enough seats in the legislature to cause this change. They would have to get legislators in the seats elected by the predominately white rural areas that would advocate for this change along with their representatives. But in this case, they would be asking legislators to vote against their own benefit in shrinking the number of legislative seats they hold. No reasonable politician is going to do this, and therefore the chances of the districts changing without the court’s involvement is very slim.
This situation raises the argument of which is more anti-democratic, a court made up of judges not representative of the citizens making political decisions or a legislator that inaccurately represents the people making political decisions? I have no clue the answer to this dilemma. I know that the supreme court has substantial powers, and we, the people, have entrusted them with this power. President Joe Biden has nominated Kenataji Brown Jackson as the next Supreme Court justice. By stepping onto the court in an extremely politicized time, she, along with the justices on the court, is tasked with deciding whether they will be representatives of the people or advocates of their own beliefs in the cases they hear. The Justices’ role in an anti-democratic institution within a democracy raises many challenges for them. The American people must have faith that the president has chosen the justices with the knowledge that they will represent the will of the people, not their personal beliefs.