Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
is a provision encompassing claims that an electoral system has diluted a minority group's vote and its understanding that claims of dilution are to be evaluated based upon how closely electoral outcomes under a given system approximate the outcomes that would obtain under an alternative, undiluted norm. See, e. g., id., at 43-51.
Contrary to the remarkable "legislative history first" method of statutory construction pursued in Gingles, however, I had thought it firmly established that the "authoritative source" for legislative intent was the text of the statute passed by both Houses of Congress and presented to the President, not a series of partisan statements about purposes and objectives collected by congressional staffers and packaged into a committee report. "We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there." Germain, 503 U. S., at 253-254. See also United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., 489 U. S. 235, 241-242 (1989); Oneale v. Thornton, 6 Cranch 53, 68 (1810). Nevertheless, our analysis in Gingles was marked conspicuously by the absence of any attempt to pursue a close reading of the text of the Act. As outlined above, had the Court addressed the text, it would have concluded that the terms of the Act do not address matters of vote "dilution."
Moreover, the legislative history of § 2 itself, and the Court's use of it in Gingles, aptly illustrate that legislative history is often used by this Court as "a forensic rather than an interpretive device," Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier, 501 U. S. 597, 621 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), and is read selectively to support the result the Court intends to achieve. It is well documented in the history of the 1982 amendments to the Act that § 2 was passed only after a compromise was reached through the addition of the provision in § 2(b) disclaiming any right to proportional representation. See S. Rep. No. 97-417, pp. 2-4 (1982); id., at 94-97 (additional views of Sen. Hatch). But the views of
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