Why would it be, then, that after the considerable labor of reviewing this fundamental test case on the theory of democratic representation, as a constitutional matter, the Justices would wind up making no firm declarations about what the Constitution required as electoral equality? Sometimes, that ultimate aim of judicial review gets frustrated, especially on a multi-member court, where majorities have to be put together, and maybe a definitive answer proves elusive and could not be achieved without fracturing the court.
That is the essence of judicial compromise, on a multi-member court. And, especially, on a multi-member court that has only eight members, and compromises have to be reached in order to avoid dividing the eight into two blocs of four.
For the Supreme Court, such a tie does not produce any result. The compromise that emerged in Evenwel v. Abbott may just be a good example of that situation.
Toggle navigation. What really killed the first President to die in office? How have subsequent constitutional amendments and acts of legislation built upon the Apportionment Act of ? While this article does not provide exhaustive answers to each of these questions, the following sections will give deeper insight into how we reached the current state of affairs by developing more robust explanatory causal links surrounding gerrymandering and electoral representation as a result of legislative and judicial influence.
This will help exhibit how these ad hoc historical shifts have led to a broken debate on how to address gerrymandering and appropriately represent constituents, which previous work has neglected to address, and allow for reevaluation of legislative representation and the consequences of prior failure to properly center the debate. Amendments to the Constitution taking place in the latter half of the nineteenth century would further alter the path of determining electoral representation.
Together with the requirement under the Apportionment Act of that congressional districts be composed of contiguous territory, the Fourteenth Amendment requirement for state-contained districts would heavily influence the geographically-bounded state-level congressional districts with which we are familiar today. It is integral to note here the dynamics of two events which, when combined, significantly affected the trajectory of contemporary debate. This is central to understanding the causal links at the root of the broken debate surrounding electoral representation and gerrymandering.
While certain acts of legislation, constitutional change, judicial decisions, and policy measures will have more influence than others, with some holding particularly prominent influence, we cannot point to a single moment in the political development of the United States that has resulted in the current state of partisan gerrymandering.
Instead, analysis of wider spaces of time, with focus on moments on substantive and durable periods of change which do not occur in isolation but typically build upon or develop in reaction to one another, is a necessary component for capturing the underlying mechanisms of development which established the current state of affairs. This allows for the most substantive answer to the questions at hand concerning how the act of gerrymandering became nationally prevalent and why the debate around gerrymandering has failed to move towards consensus in terms of addressing the practice itself.
To further safeguard civil protections under the law for emancipated slaves following the end of the Civil War, the Enforcement Acts of and not only prohibited groups from organizing to deny others the opportunity to vote, aimed at eliminating the harassment of newly emancipated slaves attempting to vote, but expanded federal oversight of congressional elections.
This shift in federal policy would not only result in harmful consequences of social policy but would mark the expansion of federal power over the implementation of polling locations at the local level by national government presenting further change in national election law. By , another piece of federal legislation would once again inexorably shape the boundaries of electoral representation in the House of Representatives. The Apportionment Act of replaced a previously held standard for House apportionment, which had continued to raise the total number of House representatives as population grew and new states were added to the Union.
This ceiling on House members was at the center of a political debate during the beginning of the twentieth century, as members of the 63rd Congress were, on the one hand, concerned about an untamed growth of representatives, and on another, the ability to be duly responsive to constituents. Today , we are seeing a shift towards the implementation of redistricting commissions designed to apply the principles of fair congressional district creation.
State redistricting commissions have become increasingly prevalent since , in which the Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. Sims 54 that states must redraw districts in order to have legislative districts with populations that are relatively equal to one another.
Redistricting commissions vary across states, with more diffuse, state-level systems constraining various aspects of redrawing congressional districts. There are many processes currently used by states to create new districts every ten years. The most common system through which congressional district lines are redrawn is by state legislatures. In thirty-one states, the state legislature has control over redrawing congressional district lines and passing new districts through a similar process to other pieces of legislation.
Thirty of these states redraw state legislative districts through the same process. A number of states have also moved towards the usage of independent redistricting commissions, designed with the hope of eliminating partisan efforts to gerrymander electoral districts at both the state legislative and federal congressional levels.
These independent commissions do , however , share the common structure of being composed of individuals who are neither elected legislators nor party officials and designed to have minimal partisan interaction in their final judgements for drawing and accepting redrawn district maps.
Multiple studies have found that independent commissions have increased competitiveness in congressional elections when compared to legislature-driven redistricting. Since the Apportionment Act of , political debates centering around changes to seat apportionment and representative member limits have been replaced with a new shift. The move in contentious political disputes has instead become centered around procedural purity in recreating geographic districts, with a supposed end goal of fairly representative electoral districts.
It should seem integral, even primary, that at the heart of disagreement about the nature of political representatives should always remain the very people through which representatives are given their authority. Instead, what we have seen, as the result of legislative shifts in the beginning of the twentieth-century and procedural shifts beginning in the latter half of the twentieth-century that endure today, is a political debate that both misrepresents the principles of electoral competition and fails to address those who political representatives are in place to serve.
While members of Congress and political parties have been tantamount in shaping the current state of partisan gerrymandering and the discussion around redistricting, courts have been equally as influential in shaping the historical trajectory of gerrymandering and the path through which Congress has moved in relation to the issue.
The influence of the courts on redistricting has become increasingly significant following the ruling in Baker v. Carr is the ruling setting precedent for courts to hold the power to take action in cases involving distribution of legislative seats, with Justice Brennan in the majority opinion firmly denying that the subject matter presents a political question. The Supreme Court ruling in Baker v. Carr would set the stage for another landmark case in , Reynolds v. This principle held that the rulings in Baker v.
Carr and Reynolds v. Sims upheld Fourteenth Amendment interpretation that citizens were guaranteed equal protection of voting rights through proportional equality in legislative districts. The principle itself was built upon the ruling in Reynolds that states must redistrict to develop state legislative districts that have approximately equal populations, so as to satisfy the Equal Protections Clause, following the precedent from Baker that courts held the authority to hear cases on legislative redistricting.
The rulings handed down by the Supreme Court in Baker v. Sims coincided with the beginning of the shift towards the focus of procedure in distributing geographic legislative districts.
In Davis v. Bandemer , 75 this issue of partisan gerrymandering was brought to the forefront, over two decades after the Baker v. Sims rulings in In , Indiana democrats filed a suit in district court alleging that a reapportionment plan put into place in the state violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminatorily diluting Democratic Party constituent voting power.
The first pertained to whether the apportionment plan in Indiana violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, and even more important, was the question before the Court as to whether issues of partisan gerrymandering were justiciable before the Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The ruling in Davis v. The contention of redistricting as a political tool and the constitutionality of partisan control of redistricting efforts was once again reshaped in by the ruling in Vieth v. The claim was dismissed in the district court and, in a decision, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling, determining that there existed no provision within the Constitution that limited partisan consideration in the process of legislative redistricting.
The decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer did not ease contentions, and further displayed the frayed nature of partisan grasp of redistricting procedure. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Upholding the constitutionality of independent redistricting commissions would mark a landmark moment of development for the procedural reform movement in addressing issues of fairness and justice in redistricting.
This decision illuminated the acceptance of the process-focused debate as the remaining issue at the center of partisan gerrymandering. While procedural reform became accepted as the paradigm through which addressing partisan motive in legislative redistricting was to be conducted, shifting redistricting processes to independent commissions and away from legislative processes did not remain constant. In Evenwel v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission , the Court unanimously concluded that the precedent set by Baker v.
Sims establishing the one-person, one-vote principle under the Equal Protection Clause did not require legislative districts to be redrawn in proportion to registered voters, but could be designed in accordance with the total population of the district. Common Cause 91 that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable because they present a political question that is not under the authority of the federal courts. Common Cause presented another split court, and set an interesting standard going forward in which the role of the courts in procedural reforms to issues of partisan gerrymandering became more uncertain.
The ruling certainly marked an interesting point for the debate around partisan gerrymandering, in which neither side can appropriately gauge the next step in changing redistricting processes to reduce partisan influence. More importantly, however, is how it presents an image of gridlock not simply as a result of polarization and partisanship in both state and federal legislatures, but failure in the hopes that the courts could be a savior for procedural reform.
Voting rights demonstration in McComb, Mississippi, View object record. The Selma March. Bloody Sunday. Voting Rights Act. New Opportunity.
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