May It Please the Court? The Solicitor General's Not‐So‐“Special” Relationship: Archibald Cox and the 1963–1964 Reapportionment Cases

Forty‐two years ago, the Warren Court decided the jurisprudential progeny of Baker v. Carr . 1 Six cases, headed by Reynolds v. Sims , 2 continued to remake the legal landscape of legislative apportionment using the “one person, one vote” principle. For President John F. Kennedy's Solicitor General, Archibald Cox, the Reynolds decisions were dangerous. He feared they would precipitate a constitutional crisis that would underscore why Justice Felix Frankfurter, his mentor, had urged his judicial colleagues to avoid entangling their institution in the “political thicket” of legislative apportionment.