Radiolab - More Perfect: The Political Thicket

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

When U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren was asked at the end of his career, “What was the most important case of your tenure?”, there were a lot of answers he could have given. He had presided over some of the most important decisions in the court’s history — cases that dealt with segregation in schools, the right to an attorney, the right to remain silent, just to name a few. But his answer was a surprise: he said “Baker v. Carr,” a 1962 redistricting case.  On this 2016 episode, part of our series More Perfect, we talk about why this case was so important. Important enough that it pushed one Supreme Court justice to a nervous breakdown, brought a boiling feud to a head, gave another justice a stroke, and changed the course of the Supreme Court — and the nation — forever.This episode is the one of the few times you can hear the voice of our Executive Producer Suzie Lechtenberg. After years of leading the team, Suzie will leave WNYC to start her new adventure. Suzie: re-publishing this episode is our way of saying thank you for all you’ve done — for the show and for each of us. Team Radiolab wishes you nothing but success and so much happiness in the next stage of your career. Episode Credits:Reported by Suzie LechtenbergProduced by Suzie Lechtenberg Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey I'm Luttifnosser. I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radio Lab. And we are going to play an all-time great episode for you today that touches quite poignantly on the current state of the Supreme Court and why it is perhaps more permeable to politics than you would wish or hope or expect. Yeah. This episode draws a direct line back to one lesser known Supreme Court case

decided over 50 years ago and shows how it really changed the fate for our country. But I think what I love most about this episode is how it allows you to crawl inside the mind of a Supreme Court justice and get a pretty intimate view of what was going on in there during this decision. Right. In a way that you almost never do in these stories. And the reporter who was able to pull off this feat is a person near and dear to our hearts at Radio Lab and she's someone whose work you likely listening love, even if you don't know what that you do. Not only is she the executive producer on this show, she also was the executive producer

on the other Lutthiff series, as well as... Terrestrials, more perfect. Sort of everything we've made here in the last, I don't know how many years, Susie, Lektemberg has molded it. Yeah. So many of the stars in the podcast constellations kind of got there because of Susie Lechtembroke.

She is famously a great mentor and someone who's great at finding talent and really allowing that talent to blossom. And her time with us is about to be over. She's going on to another fancy job, but yeah, we are so lucky to have had her for as long as we did. Yeah. As a tribute, we wanted to play this episode for you.

It's a more perfect episode, which by the way, were you around when she was working? Yeah, more perfect. Yeah, she had been working for a long time at the show Freakonomics, and then she came over, sort of down the hall a little bit. But like, when she was working on Whitaker, do you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, the funny thing, I mean, even still to this day, there's one line.

It's like a phrase that Susie still uses all the time, which is a Bantam rooster. She'll be like, oh yeah, that guy's a Bantam rooster. Huh. Just keep an ear out for it. So to Susie, we love you, we thank you. We're gonna miss you. We're so happy for you. And thank you for protecting us from all the Phantom roosters out there. Yeah, for serious.

So without further ado, more perfects the political ticket, please enjoy. Well, I think we should start the story on June 25th 1969. Well, first you should say who you are. I'm Susie Lektemberk. I'm Jan Abemrod. This is more perfect. Okay, so why why June 20th when was it? June 25th 1969. Why then? Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren is retiring. Earl Warren of the Warren court. Is that a big court? Yeah, that's really big. No, no, no, come on. Humory. I think if you think of legendary supreme court justice is he's probably in the top five so he was one of the mountain impious he's a he's a big deal

right so he's retiring so he's retiring he's been on the court for sixteen years and he's in an interview and he's asked what would you list mr. chief justice as a supreme court most important decision you're sixteen years here and he says something that he's kind of astounding. I think the reapportionment, not only of state legislatures, but also... Before you hear the answer,

I think that you need to know that he could have said all kinds of cases. He was the chief justice during... During the inter- I don't know, Miranda. He advised either of his right-streaming silence. That's you have the right-terming silence. Oh. Clarence, Earl, Gideon, petitioner, either of his right-streaming silence. That's you have the right-terming silence. Oh.

Clarence, Earl, Gideon, Petitioner. Or Gideon versus Wayne, right? It is the duty of the state. Which is you have the right-to-one attorney? Or Point Counsel. That seems big. Or... Segregation has no place in our democracy.

Brown versus Board of Education? Okay. There is no better place to stay. That one I know. That one I know. Do you think we're getting the school subspick? Yeah, what could be bigger than that? He doesn't say any of those.

What does he say? He says this little case called... The Baker versus Car case. Baker versus Car. I think that that case is perhaps the most important case that we've had since I've been on the court. He thought that case, whatever it is, is more important than the case that desegregated the schools.

He did. Wow. So what the hell is it? Exactly. No, really, what is it? It's this case that was so dramatic and so dramatic that it apparently broke two justices. There was an instance in which my brother found my father going up Yeah, old persons having business before the honorable The Supreme Court of the United States

Redmonished the Gronner and give Theratet Yeah, old folks, now city Oh, yeah, God save you and the states And the song of the court Yeah, old folks, now city Oh, yeah, old folks, now city Oh, yeah, old folks, now city Okay, so this is more of perfect, many series about the Supreme Court. Just to frame the story we're about to hear for a second, as we were putting this show

together, we hosted a panel discussion in a couple of us on stage, and a woman in the audience asked the following question. Yes. Could you address what I see as the increasing politicization of the opotheosis of which I guess was voting or electing Bush to be our president. Has the court always been this way? Is this just my perception that it's becoming more politicized?

So this turns out to be a really interesting question. Turns out, I didn't know this until Susie started looking into it, that there was a moment when the Pandora's Box just got ripped open. So I think to understand that moment and this story, you have to get to know three characters. And these aren't necessarily the three most important justices of all time.

Because at that time, you had Chief Justice Earl Warren and William Brennan on the court, and these were kind of giants of the Supreme Court. Gotcha. But for this story, these three guys are key. One of them is on the right, one of them is on the left, and one of them is just stuck right in the middle. Tragically in the middle. So on the conservative side.

What difference does it make when it's in the Constitution or in any other expression or action by the state? You had a guy named Felix Frankfurter. So Justice Frankfurter was one of the most- Wait, his name was really Frankfurter? Yes. One of the most influential justices of all time. That's Tara Grove. She teaches constitutional law at William & Mary Law School. He was a very influential scholar at Harvard Law School before he became a justice. He was a close advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was extremely smart.

Towering figure. But as a person, just as Frank Fritter, he wasn't necessarily the nicest person. I heard that from everyone I talked to. I always call him a banterem rooster. Ah, he was a difficult crusty figure. He was short, and a little bit of a pouch on him. He was one of the most...

Condescending? Egotistical of justices. He was a tough customer. When a clerk would come to the US Supreme Court chambers to deliver a message, when the person at the door tried to hand Justice Frank Futter the paper, Frank Futter would inevitably let it drop to the ground.

So the person had to bend down and pick it up to hand it to him again. Dude, that's a... ...winer move. And by the way, the voices you heard besides Tara Grove are professors Mike Seidman, Georgetown University Law Center. Sam Azakarov,

NYU Law School, Craig Smith, California University of Pennsylvania, and ex Supreme Court clerk, Alan Cohn. Colin K. L. H. Ann. Okay, so Frank Fritter is on one side of the aisle and his nemesis is a gentleman on the other side of the aisle a

Liberal named William O Douglas Here is Justice Douglas now in the Supreme Court chambers This is a recording from a 1957 interview with Justice Douglas looks very well as faces tan 1957 interview with Justice Douglas. It looks very well as faces tan, rugged, size sparkle. Douglas was this mountain climbing environmentalist, big on civil liberties. I think that this oncoming generation is more aware of the importance of

civil liberties that perhaps life generation was. And like Justice Frankfordor? Douglas was a prick. To everybody around him, everybody hated him. All those same adjectives. Condescending, egotistical, abrasive, applied. Here's how the New York Times described him. A habitual womanizer, heavy drinker, and uncaring parents.

Douglass was married four times, cheating on each of his first three wives with her eventual successor. Do you believe in kissing your brides, sir? Oh, Kathleen. He was 67, she was 23. So yes, that is William Douglas. So you have these two guys, Frankfurter the Banta Mooster, Douglas the Prick, and as you can imagine, they hated each other. They just despised each other. So Frank Futter had this habit of monologuing and while he would go on and on Douglas would just pull out a book right in front of him and just start reading. You know, he was just open in his disdain for Frank Futter.

I actually found a series of interviews that were done with Douglas in the early 60s where he basically calls Frankurter names. Goss V. Evil, utterly dishonest intellectually, he was very, very dubious, he spent his time growing up down the halls, putting poison in everybody's spring. Wow, why they hate each other so much. Well, according to Mike Seidman, some of that comes from maybe their difference in background. Finkfooter was a Jewish immigrant from Austria. A Douglas was a Westwunder. But according to him, the core of their hatred actually was ideological.

They had reflected a really important split. Over how powerful the courts should be. So for Frank Futter, courts just ought not to intervene. He believed that many matters should be left up to the political process and that courts should stay out of those issues. Douglas, he thought just the opposite. He thought that courts ought to intervene to protect, for example, minority groups, free speech rights, things of that sort. So you had this personal feed going, you had this ideological war that was brewing in the

court, and into the middle of all this, locks Charles Whitaker. You might call him the swing boat. Okay. This is Alan Cohn. I was a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Whitaker from 1957 to 1958. Whitaker grew up in a small town in Kansas called Troy. Antithesis of flashy. This is his granddaughter Kate. He attended kind of a one-room schoolhouse. The Antithesis of Flashe. This is his granddaughter Kate.

He attended kind of a one-room schoolhouse. The verbi a little red schoolhouse. Worked on the farm. But he determined that was not the life for him. Kate says when he was around 16, he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a lawyer. And she says he would actually practice law to the animals. Can you imagine pushing the plow along in the fields and then lecturing and arguing cases to the cows or to the horses or whatever?

Did you really hear that he was lecturing during the... Yes! Oh, and on the side he would hunt. He would hunt squirrels. Possum. Raccoons. Gunks. And he'd sell the pelts for a few dollars. And he amassed, I think, $700.

With that money, he put himself through law school. My understanding is that he simultaneously went to law school and high school. What? Which is just mind-boggling. Yeah, apparently he went to the head of the law school in Kansas City, and he's like, I don't have a high school diploma, but you need to let me in. The dean just saw how ambitious he was, and he was impressed. He's like, all right, you're in. I love this guy. He's like Mr. Bootsstraps. Totally. Anyhow to make a long story short. Soon he became a top lawyer. And Alan Cohn says that's because

he would do better than all of his opponents. He would outwork them, out-prepare them. Great attention to detail, great presence before a jury. And then he becomes a judge for a federal district judge and then an appeals court judge. Then in February of 1957, he gets the call. As I recall, I was in the evening and they asked if he could be in Washington in the next warning and. This is Kent Whitaker, Charles Whitaker's son. He said certainly, but my best blue suit

is at the cleaners tonight. What did he wear? Ha, ha, ha, ha. As a matter of fact, my mother or someone else got the cleaners to open up at night. In the first instance, there must be allegations, tending to show that the corporations right of exercise of free will have been destroyed. This is one of the first times that Whitaker spoke on the bench and he interjects with a question for the attorney and he is Midwestern police. The thing that's crazy to me is that he walked into the highest court in the land and he didn't

even go to college. I think it's important to understand that he had no formal education really. In other words, he never took history or political science or social science. But he loved the law. My father was not an ideal log. He expected the court to be an arena in which there were lively arguments on legal issues. And that's what he enjoyed, what he was really good at, what he loved. As Kent Whitaker puts it, his dad was kind of the walking embodiment of that thing that

Chief Justice John Roberts said back in 2005 during his confirmation hearing. Mr. Chairman, I come before the committee with no agenda. He was sort of a blank slate. It's my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat. My father was not interested in advancing a cause or a theory, but it's really... Frankly, that seems how a justice should be,

that you are approaching it without a political agenda, and that you're deciding it. I think in theory, that's exactly right. But in practice, so many of their cases, there is no law to turn to decide those cases. Kent says that his dad quickly discovered that law, the Supreme Court, is never clean cut. Cases make it there precisely

because the law isn't clear. Many of their cases are just without precedent. And it's in those cases. At least you have, must have your ideology as a starting point. And the fact that he didn't have an ideology, that left him vulnerable. He was definitely getting lobbied from both sides. Frank Fritter on one side, Douglas on the other. He was the new kid on the block

and was being pulled by each one. He didn't like the way the judges bullayed four votes. Within his first three months, he found himself in the middle of a death penalty case. He was found in a bedroom by a farmman taken outside and soon thereafter pronounced dead. A guy had been tried for arson and murder, and Douglas and the Liberals wanted to intervene to help him. They felt like he'd been treated unfairly by the lower courts.

But Frank Ferdinand and the Conservatives thought that the Supreme Court should be cautious they should honor precedent. Now according to Justice Douglas, Justice Whitaker was undecided all the time. Douglas would tell him one thing, say, oh, well, yeah, that seems right. And then Justice Frank Carter would say something else. And he'd say, oh, gosh, that sounds right. I think there was some thought that he might side with the guy who talked with him last, you know? He ends up being so undecided on this death penalty case that he forces the court to delay the vote until the next term.

And there were a series of cases like this. Albert Dale, Trope. Where the law would be fuzzy, ideologies would harden, and Whitaker, he would be right in the middle. The physical depictions of him in that first year, from people who saw him, described somebody who was restless, terribly unhappy. Had lost a lot of weight.

Nervish was agitated most of the time. It was a lot of stress on him. A massive business just put a curse that in normal course, under California for Seatcher, the metaphor for based on the service. But over the next few years, he bounces back, he finds his feet. You say that judgment of probation. His production increased substantially. In his third year, his fourth year and part of his fifth year, he wrote as many opinions that as any other judge, he wrote as many dissenting opinions as any other judge.

He was one of the nine, he was fully employed, and he wrote some very important opinions during that period of time. And along came a bigger versus car, and it broke him. That's coming up. Hey, this is more perfect. I'm Number 133-H Charles W. Baker at Alton, a balance versus Joe C. Carr at Alton. Okay, so it's April 19th, 1961. Chief Justice, please the court. The Supreme Court is hearing Baker versus Carr.

This is an individual voting rights case brought by 11 qualified voters in the state of Tennessee. Now on the surface Baker versus Car was about districts and how people are counted in this country. And this is one of the most basic ways that political power gets assigned in America. Yeah, like you know, as populations grow in size, that growth should be reflected in the number of congress people that are representing them. But at that time, in Tennessee, Tennessee hadn't changed its legislative district since 1901, which was 60 years earlier. Well, this created big problems for urban areas. Like Memphis because in those 60 years people had moved to the cities in droves and rural areas were getting smaller. But the Tennessee State Legislature had refused to update its count and it was still giving

more representation to those rural areas. In Tennessee the figure was 23 to 1. And why you law professor Sam Ezekerov. For people that don't understand, how does it actually dilute your vote? Well, and this is very simple. You have one district that has one person in it, and you have another district that has 23 people in it. The district that has one person gives all the power to that one person. The district that has 23 people, spreads it out over all

23. Wait, what? All right, think of it this way. At that time, a person in the city in Tennessee had 123rd as much of a voice in the legislature as a person living in the countryside. And here's sort of the insidious underbelly of that. It just so happened that the people living in the countryside were mostly white. And a large percentage of the people living in the city were black.

Underlying all of the reapportionment litigation, at least in the south was white supremacy. That's Doug Smith. Historian and the author of On Democracy's Doorstep, this was deeply tied to white supremacy in the maintenance of Jim Crow. It was a method of making sure that rural white legislatures continued to control the power structure. So you had this situation, he says, where a small minority was choking the majority. Choking the cities and the growing suburban areas from any sort of funds. The cities couldn't get the money they needed for roads, education, social services.

So the question at the Supreme Court was, and they would actually tackle this in two separate things. What should they do about this? Here you have geographical dimm... And here's where you get to the ideological smackdown. Liberals on the court, like Douglas, basically agreed with the plaintiff when they argue. Liberals are like, yeah, this is clearly an injustice. People in the cities are getting screwed. Their voting rights have been diluted into base to the point of nullification. But the conservatives are like, yes, people are getting hurt.

But we're not going to do anything about it. We can't. Frank Furtr. When we have back the day of a rotten situation doesn't mean a court today. Most specifically, said we cannot get involved, that as bad as this is, that was not an issue that the court should get involved in. Why not? Well, I do have to think of the role that I'm going on, what kind of role you're inviting me. He was like, think of where this will lead.

Considering the fact that this isn't a unique Tennessee situation. This isn't a unique Tennessee situation. If we end up doing this in Tennessee, pretty soon we'll be intervening in California, South Carolina. Pretty soon we'll be rewriting the entire US legislative map. Time to think of a lot of states, and not say this is just Tennessee. For me, this is the United States, not Tennessee.

Yeah, so basically he felt like this would force the courts to get involved in politics. And he really believed that the court should never, to get involved in politics. And he really believed that the court should never, ever get involved in politics. This is an idea that goes way back to something called the political question doctrine. Political question doctrine. The political question doctrine says,

no federal court can decide this issue at all. The courts simply had no business getting into what we're considered to be fundamentally political questions and what could be more fundamentally political than the makeup of a legislature. It's a philosophy rooted in the notion that unelected lifetime judges should not be substituting their will for the will of the people's elected representatives. Frank Fritter felt like even if you have a terrible political situation, if the justice

is stepped in and overruled the legislature, that would be worse than doing nothing at all, because it would be fundamentally undemocratic. He viewed the political question doctrine as a crucial limitation on the federal judicial power. And he wasn't alone. The courts had followed this guideline for about 150 years, and even with the current case in Tennessee. The federal court that first heard the case recognized the situation and actually referred

to it as an evil. The evil is a serious one which should be corrected without further delay in both. But this is a political question. Malapportionment is a political question, and only the political branches can handle this. Bring court, they have no power to do anything about protecting and enforcing the voting rights of these plaintiffs. So when the lawyer for Tennessee got up there, he didn't try to defend how Tennessee was counting or not counting its people. He basically said, yeah, what we're doing is bad, but it's nobody to violate the angel doctor separation. He basically said, if you step in,

you're gonna screw up the balance of power in America. The power in America comes from we, the people, not the courts. So this matter should be left up to the people of Tennessee and their elected representatives. Wait a second. If the whole problem is that you don't have a voice in the legislature, then how can you don't have a voice in the legislature, then how can

you suddenly just have a voice in the legislature? I mean, the other way to change it would be if the legislature itself were to give up power and why would they do that? Because of course, once elected officials are in power, they have a vested interest in keeping their districts exactly as they are because those were the districts that elected them. And fundamentally, electoral representatives knew that if they redrew the lines, that they would be voting themselves out of political power. That's Guy Charles, professor, Duke Law School.

So they had an incentive not to do anything about this. So for the liberals on the court, they felt like this was a fundamental flaw in our democracy that needed to be fixed. And nobody was going to fix it if they didn't fix it. But for Frankfurt, he's like, if you fix this one, you're going to have to fix that one and that one and that one and that one and that one. And where's it going to stop? If you do this, there is no way out.

The court's going to get stuck in what he called the political thicket. The political thicket. You know, the court what he called the political thicket. The political thicket. You know, the court must not enter the political thicket. That sounds like Frankford. He must have written those words. And the imagery of the thicket is that, you know, the deer very proudly with his new horns goes into the thicket, gets entangled, and can never get out. Frankford's claim was, once the courts are in, there will be nothing

beyond it, and someday the courts will be forced to declare winners and losers of very high profile elections. Okay, so after the oral arguments are over in Baker v. Car that justice is headed into conference. That's a meeting with just the nine. And when they went into the conference, basically the court was divided. Right down the middle. And Charles Whitaker, he was a potential swing vote. Whitaker was deeply torn.

He'd been leaning Frank Ferders way. But if there is a clear constitution right that's being violated. During this first argument, he asked a number of questions that suggested a great deal of sympathy with the plaintiffs. Then is there not both power and duty in the courts to enforce that constitutional right? There was a lot of thought that he might actually come down on the side of the plaintiffs in that case And I think it's where Frank Fritter really really began to rip into him. Justice Frank Fritter right after the first oral argument during the conference He gave a 90-minute speech so it's talked for

90 plus straight minutes Daring around the room pulling books off the shelves. Holding books off the shelf reading from prior cases. Justiculating wildly to make his point. And the whole time looking directly at Whitaker. There was one account that I heard where Frank Ferder went on for four hours, for hours. Really lecturing Whitaker, really, really blittling him.

This guy. Yes, it was horribly intimidating. At one point one of the justices on the liberal side, Justice Hugo Black. He took Whitaker aside. Black was trying to make him feel better. And Black said to Charles Whitaker, just remember, we're all boys grown tall.

We're not the gods who sit on high and dispense justice, but it's very difficult not to see yourself in that role. Particularly, if your vote might be the vote that decides everything. This started a way heavily on Whittaker's mind. He was disturbed by having the weight of the Supreme Court on its shoulders. According to his family, Kate and Ken. My mother tells me that, you know, he at that time was under a lot of stress and spoke as though he were dictating, spoke his punctuation.

Hello, Judith, Kama. It's very nice to meet you. You're clearly thinking about everything that he might say being recorded. I remember his stating that he felt like all the words that he uttered were being chiseled in stone. As a result of which he said, you don't talk much. said, you don't talk much.

So after they heard the case the first time, Wittaker couldn't make up his mind. And actually, incidentally, there was another justice, justice Stewart, who was the other swing vote in the case who also couldn't make up his mind. The court decided to hear the case again in the fall, just because they needed more time. And over the summer? Interesting enough, Whitaker said he remained deeply divided

that he'd actually written memos on both sides of the issue. Doug Smith says Whitaker wrote both an opinion for intervening in Baker vs. Car and a dissent against intervening in bigger versus car. At the same time. Meanwhile as he's doing this, Justice Frank Furters circulates a 60 page memo, explaining how this was a political question that should not be decided by the courts.

He's got a fire in his belly. He's not going to let this one go. Number six. Charles W. Baker at that, what colors? Monday, October 9, 1961. It's 10 a.m. and the court is back in session. Justice and that police court. The lawyer arguing the case against the Tennessee legislature begins to talk. Tennessee voters seek federal court protection. Frank Ferdors sits quietly for about five minutes listening. And then he starts in. I was trying to be with that stuff, and I understand all the truth. The truth already does include, because there are any stages for you to be different

from you in the world, but it's passed on it by denying a right under it. If that isn't passing on it, I don't know what is passing. Of course not Mr. Justice, Frank Carter. Frank Carter hammers the attorneys with questions. During the course of oral arguments, he speaks approximately 170 times. 170? 170. Damn.

Charles Whitaker? I see. Have some system for the allocation of its legislative or its statistical count. 17 times. Well, since they have. After nearly four hours of oral arguments, the justice is recessed and go into conference. Frank Furtre needed desperately.

He had to get a whittaker, and he would kept after him like a dog after a bone, trying to persuade him. And that harassing he got, I have to make a point here. It was a nightmare, and I saw the nightmare. How so, describe it, Jimmy. Well, he was a nervous wreck and like a cat on a hot tin roof. I found out, I don't know if he told me or his wife told me. He was on tranquilizers. To try to overcome what he thought was just work-related stress,

well, clearly something was taking hold of him. You had trouble concentrating? Highly fraught. I would characterize his eventual breakdown as something of a slow descent by the early spring after the court had returned from its winter recess. Whittaker was absent from the court.

You mean like he just didn't, he didn't show for work one day? Apparently so. This clerks didn't know where he was. The other justices didn't know his whereabouts. He just disappeared. Really in the middle of what's going to become one of the monumental decisions of the 20th century, he disappears. He had to escape. Where do you go? Well, he went to really what would be a cabin in the woods in the middle of Wisconsin and he called up one of his former law associates in Kansas City to

come up and join him. And according to Craig Smith, he and this guy whose name was Sam Moby, they would just sit there on the bank of the lake in silence. They would sit for hours on end not talking to each other. Just waiting for the justice to speak. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in itself. You know, we have no way of knowing what he was thinking at that moment, but I imagine he was just sitting there and he was thinking about these two realities that could unfold. Like, on the one hand, if the court stepped into politics, they could protect people. So, Alabama, the campus, side and home. You got to disperse your heart, and disperse your heart. Ah!

But on the other hand, what kind of precedent would this have? It's a sand day in America, Mr. President, but we can't. Would it make the court too powerful? In which case, if you would protect the people from the court too powerful. In which case, who would protect the people from the court? I imagine his mind went back and forth and back and forth. And when Whitaker decided he really had to get back to work, then this protégé would say to him. No, just relax. Just take it easy and get yourself together before you decide

to go back. After three weeks, Justice Whitaker returns to DC. Back to Washington for a few days. That's Kentigan, his son. We found my father to be really in extremists and debate. And I think borderline suicidal. When you said he was suicidal, what do you mean? There was an instance in which my brother found my father going upstairs to get a shotgun.

Yeah. A few days later, Charles Whitaker checks himself into a hospital. There is some evidence that it was really justice Douglas who convinced Whitaker to go to the hospital. I do recall that Whitaker had a nervous breakdown. That's just as William Douglas again. Very good. He pressed, he asked me what I thought he should do. I told him I didn't think that he was going to be in position to decide what he should do until he had well. A few weeks later, March 29, 1962, the presidential press conference from the new state Department Auditorium Washington DC. Several announcements to make. It is with extreme regret that I

announced the retirement of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans-Wittaker, Effective April 1st. Justice Wittaker, a member of the Supreme Court, for nearly five years, and of the Federal Judiciary for nearly eight years, is retiring at the direction of his position for reasons of disability. I know that the bench in the bar of the entire nation joined me in commending Mr. Justice Whitaker for his devoted service to his country during a critical period in its history. Next, I want to take this opportunity to stress again the importance of the tax bill

now before the House of Representatives. Wow. And whatever happened with the case with the bakery car? Well, Whitaker didn't vote on Baker versus Carr. So you could say that this case that essentially broke him his vote didn't count Wow Around the time that he was in the hospital There was sort of this liberal coup at the court where Frankfurt or lost a couple of other votes

So in the end the decision actually wasn't very close at all. What was it? It was six two Frankie yeah, and Brennan wrote the majority opinion and he says that this whole kind of cluster f*** that we've been fighting over of how states and Tennessee counter voters that this is something the courts can and should look at. So in other words, they decided to lower their horns and go into the thicket. Oh, yeah, they did. No, yay! And just one or two final questions. What happened to Justice Frank Verder?

Well, the thing that I find perhaps most extraordinary is it less than two weeks after the decision in Baker vs. Carr came down. Felix Frankford was working at his desk at the Supreme Court. And Frankford's secretary found him sprawled on the floor of his office from a stroke. He suffered a massive stroke and then never returned to service. And while he was in the hospital solicitor general Archibald Cox visited

Frankforder and Frankforder, he was in a wheelchair and could barely speak, but he apparently conveyed to Archibald Cox that the decision and Baker versus Carr had essentially caused his stroke. He felt so passionately that the court should stay out of the case that he physically, physically deteriorated after the court had gone the other way. After Baker vs. Car, President Kennedy essentially had two Supreme Court vacancies to fill. Now Whitaker see he filled with a guy who turned out to be a moderate. Frank Ferders vacancy, that second vacancy? It's that vacancy that will lead to the appointment of a man named Arthur Goldberg. That is the

fifth vote that the four liberals, what are regarded as the four liberals, that becomes the fifth vote that they need really to create what has come to be regarded as the war and court revolution. This is when the Supreme Court basically became an agent for social change. That revolution that begins with the 1962 term, that's the revolution that is going to change. The standard that starts out with that is going to change. The way we draw our political boundaries, the way we think of criminal justice, the way we treat First Amendment religious and obscenity issues. That's the war in court that people remember. And that's the court that came into existence when Felix Frankfurter left. And so just thinking about that question that that woman asked all the way at the beginning

of her story. Yes. Could you address what I see as the increasing politicization of the core, the apotheosis of which I guess was voting or electing Bush to be our president? You can kind of draw a line from this moment in Baker versus Carr all the way to December 9th, 2000. The polls in six new states have just closed, and the lead story at this hour is, the state of Florida is too close to call.

I think Field Trinkford would have said, see, that's what I told you, that's what would happen, is that eventually you will be deciding a partisan question which presidential candidate essentially received the most votes. For those who felt themselves on the losing side of Bush's record, this was just this Frank Ferders revenge. This was the moment that Baker V. Carr had opened up.

And when I teach this to students, and particularly in the decade after Bush regor, when the sentiments about this were still quite raw, I would say to them, well, is this was Frankfurt or right? And I remember a student in the mid-2000s who said, in class, I never thought I would say this, but because I hated the outcome in Bush regor, I was so angry when the court interceded. But if Bush regor is the price we have to pay for the courts making the overall political system work

somewhat more tolerably properly. It's a price I'm willing to pay. Before we totally sign off, what happened to Douglas? We sort of lost track of him. So after Baker versus Cara was decided, he went on to be a Supreme Court Justice for 13 more years. And to this day, he actually holds the record for being the longest serving justice of all time, 36 years. Huh. And Frank for her. So Baker versus Cara was the last case that he ever heard, and he died a few years afterwards. Man. And Charles Whitaker, did he ever recover?

Well, after Whitaker retired from the court, he moved back to Kansas City with his family, and his son said that it took him about two years to get better from his nervous breakdown. But he did get better, and eventually he got a job as counsel to general motors, but he never returned to the bench. He never was a judge again. Okay, more perfect is produced by me, Chad. I'm Rod with Suzy Lektonberg, Tobin Lone, Kelsey Paget, Go Kelsey. With Sorn Wheeler, Ellie Mistal, David Herman, Alex Overington, Karen Duffin, Sean Ramisfaram, Katherine Wells, Barry Finkl, Andy Mills, and Michelle Harris. Special thanks to Gianne Riley. Archival interviews with Justice William O. Douglas come from the Department

of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library. Supreme Court audio is from Oye. Oye, Oye, Oye. A free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. More perfect is funded in part by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abemrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasir are our co-host. Suzy Lektenberg is our executive producer.

Dylan Keave is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Brusler, Rachel Q. Sik, Akari Foster Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Pasco-Tierres, Sindu Nena Sanban Dam, Matt Kiyote, Annie McEwen, Alex Nissen, Sour Carrey, and a Rascwed Pass, Sarah Sandback, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Andrew Vignales. Our fact-tuckers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Finn calling from Stores, Connecticut.

Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred D. Swann Foundation.