Ray v. Blair

Ray v. Blair
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 31, 1952 Decided April 3, 1952
Full case name	Ray, Chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee of Alabama v. Edmund Blair
Citations	343 U.S. 214 (more) 72 S. Ct. 654; 96 L. Ed. 894; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2246
Case history
Prior	57 So.2d 395 (Ala. 1952); cert. granted, 343 U.S. 901 (1952).
Holding
Ray could not be forced to certify Blair if Blair refused to pledge to vote for a certain candidate.
Court membership
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Robert H. Jackson · Harold H. Burton Tom C. Clark · Sherman Minton
Case opinions
Majority	Reed, joined by Vinson, Burton, Clark, Minton
Dissent	Jackson, joined by Douglas
Black and Frankfurter took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. XII, XIV

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Ray v. Blair

Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952), is a major decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was a case on state political parties' requiring of presidential electors to pledge to vote for the party's nominees before being certified as electors. It ruled that it is constitutional for states to allow parties to require such a pledge of their candidates for elector, and that it was not a breach of otherwise qualified candidates' rights to be denied this position if they refused the pledge.^[1] However, the violation of any pledge a faithless elector made was not at issue. It officially defined state electors as representatives of their respective states, not the federal government. The case was argued on March 31, 1952 and the Court announced its decision on April 3, 1952; the majority and dissenting opinions were issued on April 15, 1952.