1048
Souter, J., dissenting
Constitution's commitment of districting responsibility to the political branches of the States and has accordingly assumed over the years that traditional districting principles widely accepted among States represented an informal baseline of acceptable districting practices. We have thus accorded substantial respect to such traditional principles (as those, for example, meant to preserve the integrity of neighborhood communities, to protect incumbents, to follow existing political boundaries, to recognize communities of interest, and to achieve compactness and contiguity); we have seen these objectives as entirely consistent with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments' demands. See, e. g., id., at 578 ("A State may legitimately desire to maintain the integrity of various political subdivisions, insofar as possible, and provide for compact districts of contiguous territory in designing a legislative apportionment scheme"); White v. Weiser, 412 U. S. 783, 797 (1973) ("[T]he District Court did not suggest or hold that the legislative policy of districting so as to preserve the constituencies of congressional incumbents was unconstitutional or even undesirable"); Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 156 (1993) ("Because the States . . . derive their reapportionment authority . . . from independent provisions of state and federal law, the federal courts are bound to respect the States' apportionment choices unless those choices contravene federal requirements") (internal quotation marks omitted; citation omitted).
The fundamental tenet underlying most of these constitutionally unobjectionable principles (respect for communities of interest or neighborhoods, say) is that voting is more than
U. S. 186, 267 (1962) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) ("The Court's authority— possessed of neither the purse nor the sword—ultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction. Such feeling must be nourished by the Court's complete detachment, in fact and in appearance, from political entanglements and by abstention from injecting itself into the clash of political forces in political settlements").
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