435 Representatives: Unconstitutional?

Is Congress too small and unequal to do its job?

James Joyner · · 8 comments

Is Congress too small and unequal to do its job?

The U.S. House of Representatives is the same size it was a century ago — even as the country’s population has grown more than three times as large.

That’s resulted in growing disparities between the largest congressional district and the smallest. When the U.S. Census Bureau releases state-by-state population numbers this month, it’s likely that Montana’s lone congressional district will have about 450,000 more people in it than that of its Wyoming neighbor. The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as today if justices will hear a case on whether those disparities violate the principle of “one man, one vote.” Justices were scheduled to discuss the case behind closed doors Friday. The lawsuit, Clemons v. U.S. Department of Commerce, seeks a court order to force Congress to add more members so that the sizes of congressional districts would be more equal. Last July, in a decision that quoted liberally from the Founding Fathers, a special three-judge panel ruled against changing the current system. “We see no reason to believe that the Constitution as originally understood or long applied imposes the requirements of close equality among districts in different states,” it ruled.

Our own Dave Schuler frequently argues that the current scheme is not representative. And he’s doubtless right: The average Congressman has over 700,000 constituents. How much does he actually care about their interests? How likely is he actually to meet most of them face-to-face?

When districts are that large, the likeliest outcome is that the Representative will pay most attention to the organized interest groups who lobby him and donate money to his re-election effort. At best, this is representation once removed.

And that assumes that the district is politically competitive to begin with. In too many cases, the lines are drawn with the specific intent of stacking the deck in favor of the incumbent or his party. At that point, there’s not really any representation to speak of.

All that said, however, the lawsuit is about a different question: Does a fixed size of 435 Representatives violate the Supreme Court imposed requirement of equal representation — the One Man, One Vote principle of Baker vs. Carr?

I don’t see how. The Framers mandated that each state have at least one Representative and that “the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000 persons.” So, there was always going to be a disparity.

via Glenn Reynolds

Nor did they mandate that there be one representative for every 30,000 persons. Good thing, too, since we’d need 10,333 Representatives to meet that number.

There’s a practical limit to the size of a working legislative body. It’s probably higher than 435 but it’s certainly much less than 10,333. The smallest state has roughly 500,000 people. Using that as the guide, we’d have 620 reps. If we went down to 250,000 — which would be a significant improvement in representation over present — we’d need 1040. That’s an awfully big legislature.