452
Opinion of the Court
portionment after the 1930 census, and formally adopted it in the 1941 statute at issue in this case.25
The report of the National Academy of Sciences committee noted that Congress had properly rejected the Hamilton/ Vinton method, and concluded that the use of only five methods could lead to a workable solution of the fractional remainder problem.26 In the opinion of the committee mem-25 Act of Nov. 15, 1941, § 1, 55 Stat. 761-762, 2 U. S. C. § 2a. That Act also made the reapportionment process self-executing, eliminating the need for Congress to enact an apportionment Act after each decennial census:
"(a) On the first day, or within one week thereafter, of the first regular session of the Eighty-second Congress and of each fifth Congress thereafter, the President shall transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed, as ascertained under the seventeenth and each subsequent decennial census of the population, and the number of Representatives to which each State would be entitled under an apportionment of the then existing number of Representatives by the method known as the method of equal proportions, no State to receive less than one Member.
"(b) . . . It shall be the duty of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, within fifteen calendar days after the receipt of such statement, to send to the executive of each State a certificate of the number of Representatives to which such State is entitled under this section."
26 The five were the "method of smallest divisors," the "method of the harmonic mean," the "method of equal proportions," the "method of major fractions," and the "method of greatest divisors." 1 App. 17.
Each of the methods corresponds to a different formula for producing a "priority list." A priority list is the mechanical method used in modern apportionments to translate a particular method of apportionment into a particular assignment of Representatives. The technical process of forming the priority list proceeds as follows. First, one Representative is assigned to each State to satisfy the constitutional guarantee. Second, the population of each State is divided by a certain tabulated series of divisors. Third, the quotients for all the States are arranged in a single series in order of size, beginning with the largest quotient, for the 51st Member of the House. This forms the priority list. The series of quotients is different for each of the five apportionment methods. See Chafee, Congressional Reapportionment, 42 Harv. L. Rev., at 1029, n. 39.
The following are the divisors by which a State's population is divided under each method ("n" is the number of the State's next seat):
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