"Birth of a Gerrymander; The Supreme Court Can Finally Bring Sanity to Voting Rights Law"

Abigail Thernstrom has written this commentary (originally for the Weekly Standard but available at AEI without a subscription). It begins:

On March 1, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving the Texas congressional redistricting plan engineered in 2003 by former House majority leader Tom DeLay. Appellants charge both that the Texas map was partisan districting run amok and that it violated the right of minority voters, under the Voting Rights Act, to elect the candidates of their choice.

On the first matter, court precedents are sparse; the High Court has been understandably reluctant to tackle partisan gerrymandering, with the result that no constitutional standards (beyond one person, one vote) govern the process. But on the second matter, where precedents are numerous and murky, the Court should seize the opportunity to begin restoring intelligibility and common sense to an area of law that seems to have come unmoored from American principle.

Posted by Rick Hasen at February 15, 2006 07:29 AM