Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
the electoral process, whether it results in control of a seat or not. Cf. id., at 14-59.9 Under such a theory, minorities unable to control elected posts would not be considered essentially without a vote; rather, a vote duly cast and counted would be deemed just as "effective" as any other. If a minority group is unable to control seats, that result may plausibly be attributed to the inescapable fact that, in a majoritarian system, numerical minorities lose elections.10
In short, there are undoubtedly an infinite number of theories of effective suffrage, representation, and the proper apportionment of political power in a representative democracy that could be drawn upon to answer the questions posed in Allen. See generally Pitkin, supra. I do not pretend to have provided the most sophisticated account of the various possibilities; but such matters of political theory are beyond the ordinary sphere of federal judges. And that is precisely the point. The matters the Court has set out to resolve in vote dilution cases are questions of political philosophy, not questions of law.11 As such, they are not readily subjected
9 Cf. also Levinson, Gerrymandering and the Brooding Omnipresence of Proportional Representation, 33 UCLA L. Rev. 257, 260-261 (1985).
10 There are traces of this view in our cases as well. See Whitcomb, 403 U. S., at 153, 155; id., at 160 ("The short of it is that we are unprepared to hold that district-based elections decided by plurality vote are unconstitutional in either single- or multi-member districts simply because the supporters of losing candidates have no legislative seats assigned to them"). See also League of United Latin American Citizens v. Midland Independent School Dist., 812 F. 2d 1494, 1507 (CA5) (Higginbotham, J., dissenting) ("I had supposed that the essence of our republican arrangement is that voting minorities lose"), vacated on rehearing, 829 F. 2d 546 (1987) (en banc) (per curiam).
11 The point is perhaps so widely accepted at this date that it needs little further demonstration. See, e. g., L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 13-7, p. 1076, n. 7 (2d ed. 1988) (stating that "no strategy [in vote dilution cases] can avoid the necessity for at least some hard substantive decisions of political theory by the federal judiciary"); Howard & Howard, The Dilemma of the Voting Rights Act—Recognizing the Emerging Political Equality Norm, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1615, 1633, 1635 (1983) (hereinafter
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