1052
Souter, J., dissenting
Before Shaw I, we not only thus limited judicial interference with state districting efforts to cases of readily demonstrable harm to an identifiable class of voters, but we also confined our concern with districting to cases in which we were capable of providing a manageable standard for courts to apply and for legislators to follow. Within two years of holding in Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186 (1962), that malapportionment was a justiciable issue, "the Court recognized that its general equal protection jurisprudence was insufficient for the task and announced an increasingly rigid, simple to apply, voting-specific mandate of equipopulousity." Karlan, Still Hazy After All These Years: Voting Rights in the Post-Shaw Era, 26 Cumberland L. Rev. 287, 299 (1996) (hereinafter Karlan, Post-Shaw Era). Likewise, although it is quite true that the common definition of a racial vote-dilution injury ("less opportunity . . . to participate in the political process and to elect representatives . . . ," 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b)) is no model of concrete description, the Court has identified categories of readily comprehensible evidence bearing on the likelihood of such an injury, including facts about size of minority population, quantifiable indications of political cohesiveness and bloc voting, historical patterns of
ensure a fair shake by denying each side the right to make race-based selections. The cost of the alternative is simply too great. It is an entirely different matter, however, to recognize that racial groups, like all other groups, play a real and legitimate role in political decisionmaking. It involves nothing more than an acknowledgment of the reality that our concepts of common interest, geography, and personal allegiances are in many places simply too bound up with race to deny some room for a theory of representative democracy allowing for the consideration of racially conceived interests. A majority of the Court has never disagreed in principle with this position. See, e. g., Shaw I, 509 U. S. 630, 642 (1993) (noting that race-conscious redistricting is not always unconstitutional); Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 928-929 (1995) (O'Connor, J., concurring) (consideration of race in the redistricting process does not always violate the Constitution); ante, at 958 (opinion of O'Connor, J.) (noting that strict scrutiny does "not apply merely because redistricting is performed with consciousness of race").
Page: Index Previous 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007