894
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
should make obvious a simple fact that for far too long has gone unmentioned: Vote dilution cases have required the federal courts to make decisions based on highly political judgments—judgments that courts are inherently ill-equipped to make. A clear understanding of the destructive assumptions that have developed to guide vote dilution decisions and the role we have given the federal courts in redrawing the political landscape of the Nation should make clear the pressing need for us to reassess our interpretation of the Act.
A
As it was enforced in the years immediately following its enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437, was perceived primarily as legislation directed at eliminating literacy tests and similar devices that had been used to prevent black voter registration in the segregated South. See A. Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights 17-27 (1987) (hereinafter Thernstrom). See also Guinier, The Representation of Minority Interests: The Question of Single-Member Districts, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1135, 1151 (1993) (referring to actions securing access to the ballot as the "first generation" of Voting Rights Act claims).2 This focus in enforcement flowed, no doubt, from the emphasis on access to the ballot apparent in the central provision of the Act, § 4, which used a mathematical formula based on voter registration and
brought under the Equal Protection Clause. See, e. g., White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973); Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124 (1971); Burns v. Richardson, 384 U. S. 73 (1966). The early development of our voting rights jurisprudence in those cases provided the basis for our analysis of vote dilution under the amended § 2 in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986).
2 Cf. L. Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority 49, n. 58 (1994) (hereinafter Guinier) ("The first generation of voting litigation, and the 1965 statute which represented the congressional response, were concerned with the complete and total exclusion of blacks from the electoral process").
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