The Political Thicket Reprise

This week, we revisit one of the most important Supreme Court cases you’ve probably never heard of: Baker v. Carr, a redistricting case from the 1960s, which challenged the justices to consider what might happen if they stepped into the world of electoral politics. It’s a case so stressful that it pushed one justice to a nervous breakdown, put another justice in the hospital, brought a boiling feud to a head, and changed the course of the Supreme Court — and the nation — forever. Voices in the episode include: • Tara Grove — More Perfect legal advisor, University of Texas at Austin law professor • Guy-Uriel Charles — Harvard Law School professor • Louis Michael Seidman — Georgetown Law School professor • Sam Issacharoff — NYU law school professor • Craig A. Smith — PennWest California humanities professor and Charles Whittaker's biographer • J. Douglas Smith — author of "On Democracy's Doorstep" • Alan Kohn — former Supreme Court clerk for Charles Whittaker (1957 term) • Kent Whittaker — Charles Whittaker's son • Kate Whittaker — Charles Whittaker's granddaughter Learn more: • 1962: Baker v. Carr • 2000: Bush v. Gore • 2016: Evenwel v. Abbott Music in this episode by Gyan Riley , Alex Overington , David Herman , Tobin Low and Jad Abumrad . Archival interviews with Justice William O. Douglas come from the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library. Special thanks to Jerry Goldman and to Whittaker's clerks: Heywood Davis, Jerry Libin and James Adler. Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez® , a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School. Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

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The Political Thicket Reprise is an episode from More Perfect by WNYC Studios.

This episode is 00:45:18 long.

This episode was published on Jun 1, 2023.

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