For the past several posts, I’ve explored the long history of congressional apportionment in the United States: After looking at all of this, I think one conclusion becomes difficult to avoid, the real issue is not whether the Wyoming Rule is perfect. The real issue is whether an arbitrary cap of 435 representatives still makes […]
Another Supreme Court case that touched on appropriation was the 1992 case, US Department of Commerce et al. v Montana et al. Although this case was not about the total number of representatives in the House, it did review how the apportionment of the 435 was calculated. In the early 1990s, the state of Montana
US Department of Commerce v. Montana: Calculating Each State’s Representatives Read More »
In 1964, the United States Supreme Court decided an important case called Wesberry v. Sanders. At first glance, the case is about how states draw their congressional districts, but the Court spent a lot of time talking about how representation in Congress is supposed to work in the first place. Understanding that deeper idea helps
Wesberry v Sanders: The Supreme Court Touches on Apportionment Read More »
In previous posts, we talked about current apportionment and concerns about it, proposed the Wyoming Rule to address the concerns and even provided several arguments against the proposed rule. Before we can decide if the Wyoming Rule is the way to go, we need to understand something more basic, how representatives have been divided up.
How We Divide the House? Read More »
If you follow debates about representation in the United States, you’ve probably heard of the “Wyoming Rule.” On its face, it sounds simple. Even fair. The idea is this: take the population of the smallest state, usually Wyoming and use that number to decide how many people are in each congressional district. Then divide every
The Wyoming Rule Sounds Fair. But Is It? A Steelman Case Against It. Read More »
This is a quick glance at the numbers, specifically the representation ratio. How many people does the Representative speak? Until the passage of the of the Apportionment Act of 1911, Congress increased the size of the House after every decennial census. Since the beginning, the US population has increased 84x while the representation ratio has
A Look at the Numbers Read More »
Debates about representation in the United States House of Representatives are almost as old as the country itself. When Americans argue today about whether 435 members are enough, they are stepping into a conversation that began in 1787. Back then, writers using pen names filled newspapers with essays about whether the new Constitution would truly
The Federalist v. Anti-Federalist Representation Debate Read More »
Introduction: Why Representation Still Matters In the United States, representation is the heart of our democracy. When people say Congress feels distant or unresponsive, they are often talking about representation (how many people each member of the House of Representatives speaks for) and how fairly political power is shared among the states. The House was
Dividing the Lines, Not the Power Read More »
