Calkins v. Hare’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2003
4 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Baker v. Carr · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Yick Wo v. Hopkins · Skinner v. State of Oklahoma Williamson · Cannon v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘Any districting, however, disparate with respect to population, may conceivably be justified by saying that the Legislature expected the area to either shrink or to grow. If such a suggestion, without more, suffices to justify gross population disparities, then an easy answer to a constitutional denial has indeed been found. We do not intimate that population trends either are or are not significant and useable. But the difficulty in respect of their use is that a basic constitutional right may be lost to a speculative future event, an unequal trade at best and at worst a cynical deprivation. The proof of a “trend” must be compelling, immediate, and inescapable to justify disfranchisement. We find here, on the other hand, no proofs whatever.’ (1. c. 828.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We do not measure constitutional rights in these terms. They set up wholly false standards. That the average man gets due process in our courts does not justify railroading some luckless scoundrel every now and then. Nor is it an answer to a charge of unconstitutional disfranchisement that only 10,000 people are deprived of their right to vote, this being but a small percentage of the entire voting population. These 10,000 have a right to vote equally with others, no matter what percentage of the total they comprise. We take this to be as clear as the proposition that none of our people can be denied their free right of worship no matter how small the sect, and that none of our people shall be deprived of their right of free speech, no matter how obnoxious to most of us their doctrines ( 228 F. Supp. at 828 ).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““While it may not be possible to draw congressional districts with mathematical precision, that is no excuse for ignoring our Constitution’s plain objective of making equal representation for equal numbers of people the fundamental goal for the House of Representatives. That is the high standard of justice and common sense which the Founders set for us.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.