reapportionment of districts for Congressional
representation;[215] and suits brought by States to test their political
and so-called sovereign rights.[216] The leading case on the evidence
required to prove the enactment of a statute is Field _v._ Clark,[217]
where it was held that the enactment of a statute is conclusively proved
by the enrolled act signed by the speaker of the House of
Representatives and the President of the Senate, and the Court will not
look beyond these formalities of record by examining the journals of the
two houses of Congress or other records. Similarly, the Court has held
that the efficacy of the ratification of a proposed constitutional
amendment in the light of previous rejection or subsequent attempted
withdrawal is political in nature, pertaining to the political
departments, with the ultimate authority in Congress by virtue of its
control over the promulgation of the adoption of amendments.[218]
Simultaneously, the Court ruled that the question of the lapse of a
reasonable length of time between proposal and ratification is for
Congress to determine and not the Court.[219]

Recent Cases

A few cases will suffice to illustrate the application of the concept of
political questions since 1938. In Colegrove _v._ Green,[220] a
declaratory judgment was sought to have the division of Illinois into
Congressional districts declared invalid as a violation of the equal
protection of the laws. Justice Frankfurter in announcing the judgment
of the Court, in an opinion in which Justices Reed and Burton joined,
was of the opinion that dismissal of the suit was required both by the
decision in Wood _v._ Broom,[221] that there is no federal requirement
that Congressional districts shall contain as nearly as practicable an
equal number of inhabitants, and because the question was not
justiciable. Justice Rutledge thought that Smiley _v._ Holm[222]
indicated that the question was justiciable but concurred in the result
on the ground that the case was one in which the courts should decline
to exercise jurisdiction.[223] Justice Black in a dissent supported by
Justices Douglas and Murphy thought that the case was justiciable and
would have invalidated the reapportionment, leaving the State free to
elect all of its representatives from the State at large.[224] In
MacDougall _v._ Green,[225] however, the Court seemed to regard as
justiciable the question of the validity of the provision of the
Illinois El