Nathaniel Schwamm
92 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1182
Justiciability doctrines are intertwined with constitutional commands and prudential concerns. They weave together text and history; they aim to protect democracy and individual rights. In 2019, the Supreme Court, in Rucho v. Common Cause, determined that partisan gerrymandering claims suffer from justiciability problems by implicating a doctrinal subpart—the political question doctrine. Within its decision, the Court intended to calm fears that the decision would reach too far, so it wrote that other types of politically implicated claims were not impacted. For example, one-person, one-vote claims are still justiciable, the Court wrote, because they are “relatively easy to administer as a matter of math.” But, beyond one-person, one-vote claims, where else is math “relatively easy”? Multiple courts are now struggling to answer this question across diverse legal problems.
This Essay proposes an analytic framework to ease that struggle and answer that question: the mathematical question doctrine. In turn, this Essay defines the contours, shows its advantages, and reconceptualizes Rucho. First, it explores the background of the political question doctrine and articulates a set of its justifications. Second, it explains how those justifications fare when courts need to consider math, but it rejects a categorical treatment. Instead, the Essay enumerates factors at the core of a mathematical question: the complexity of math, numerosity of variables, and ease of quantifiability. It roots these factors within the jurisprudential justifications of the political question doctrine and shows their problematic traits. Third, the Essay revisits Rucho to show that although the proposed approach is consistent with caselaw, it is more fully fleshed out, better explains the approach and outcome of Rucho, and gives useful guidance to future courts.
