Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
that something in our jurisprudence has gone awry.18 We
would be mighty Platonic guardians indeed if Congress had granted us the authority to determine the best form of local government for every county, city, village, and town in America. But under our constitutional system, this Court is not a centralized politburo appointed for life to dictate to the provinces the "correct" theories of democratic representation, the "best" electoral systems for securing truly "representative" government, the "fairest" proportions of minority political influence, or, as respondents would have us hold today, the "proper" sizes for local governing bodies. We should be cautious in interpreting any Act of Congress to grant us power to make such determinations.
Justice Blackmun suggests that, if we were to interpret the Act to allow challenges to the size of governmental bodies under § 2, the Court's power to determine the structure that local governing bodies must take would be bounded by the constraints that local customs provide in the form of benchmarks. Post, at 952-953. But as Justice O'Connor rightly points out, such benchmarks are themselves arbitrarily selected and would provide no assured limits on judicial power. Ante, at 888-891. In my view, the local standards to which Justice Blackmun points today are little different from the various standards to which the Court has resorted in the past as touchstones of undiluted voting systems. The appeal to such standards, which are necessarily arbitrarily chosen, should not serve to obscure the assumption in the Court's vote dilution jurisprudence of a sweeping
18 Justice Stevens suggests that the discussion above outlines policy arguments best addressed to Congress. See post, at 957. In one sense, that is precisely my point. The issues I have discussed above involve policy decisions that are matters best left to Congress. Our interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, however, has required federal courts to take over the policymaking role in the area of voting rights and has forced judges to make decisions on matters beyond the normal sphere of judicial competence.
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