1070
Souter, J., dissenting
to them) when compliance with § 2 of the Voting Rights Act is an object of districting would render a State's districting obligation more definite only by eliminating its ability to apply the very districting principles traditionally considered to be important enough to furnish a theoretical baseline of reasonable districting practices.
IV
If today's developments fall short of curing Shaw's unworkability, it must be said that options for addressing them are few. Assuming that Shaw is not to be overruled as a flawed experiment, the Court may select from two alternatives, depending on whether its weightier concern is to preserve traditional districting principles or to cure the anomalies created by Miller's "predominant purpose" criterion.
If the Court's first choice is to preserve Shaw in some guise with the least revolutionary effect on districting principles and practice, the Court could give primacy to the principle of compactness and define the limits of tolerance for unorthodox district shape by imposing a measurable limitation on the bizarre, presumably chosen by reference to historical practice (adjusted to eliminate the influence of any dilution that very practice may have caused in the past, cf. Pildes & Niemi, 92 Mich. L. Rev., at 573-574, n. 246 (discussing the egregious racial gerrymanders of the 19th century)) and calculated on the basis of a district's dispersion, perimeter, and population. See id., at 553-575. This alternative would be true to Shaw I in maintaining that a point can be reached when the initially lawful consideration of race becomes unreasonable and in identifying appearance as the expression of undue consideration; and it would eliminate Miller's impossible obligation to untangle racial considerations from so-called "race-neutral" objectives (such as according respect to community integrity and protecting the seats of
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