James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and the “Radically Irresponsible” One Person, One Vote Decisions

Abstract

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock took a keen interest in the United States Supreme Court’s reapportionment decisions of the 1960s, which established a “one person, one vote” standard for state legislative apportionment. This paper traces the long arc of Buchanan and Tullock’s opposition to the “one person, one vote” standard. The Calculus of Consent offers a highly qualified efficiency argument against “one person, one vote,” but over time Buchanan and Tullock grew even more vocally critical of the decisions. Buchanan ultimately advocated a constitutional amendment overturning “one person, one vote” in a private set of recommendations to Congressional Republicans. This paper additionally assesses Tullock’s 1987 complaint that scholars and judges neglected The Calculus of Consent’s analysis of reapportionment. A review of the reapportionment literature between 1962 and 1987 demonstrates that while the book was frequently cited, the literature generally ignored its analysis of the efficiency of apportionment standards.