The Illinois Congressional Redistricting Case

Unsuccessful as plaintiffs and appellees in a prayer for relief under the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934, as amended, from the effects of the inequitable and outmoded act of Illinois of 1901 creating the present Congressional districts, Kenneth W. Colegrove (who in other capacities is chairman of the department of political science at Northwestern University and secretary-treasurer of the American Political Science Association), Peter J. Chamales, attorney, and Kenneth C. Sears, professor of law at the University of Chicago, have nevertheless received from the District Court and from the Supreme Court encouraging dicta and dissent which foreshadow new developments in election law. The legislature of Illinois has repeatedly refused to redistrict the state for Congressional representation, despite grave and increasing population shifts. A new but inequitable Congressional redistricting act, passed by the General Assembly in 1931, was declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court because it violated federal law and the provision of the Illinois constitution requiring that “all elections shall be free and equal.” Ten years later, when a similar attack was made on the long-standing and much more discriminatory act of 1901, the Illinois supreme court took an opposite view, declaring that the constitutional section is addressed primarily to the legislature and that to argue for a requirement, in all cases, that districts be equal in population “is to assert a millennium which cannot be reached.”

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