950
Stevens, J., dissenting
ment and redistricting must include the right, free of judicial rejection, to implement state policies that may fail to remedy to the fullest extent possible the voting rights violations originally found." Id., at 382.
In dramatic contrast, the Court today rejects North Carolina's plan because it does not provide the precise remedy that might have been ordered by a federal court, even though it satisfies potential plaintiffs, furthers such race-neutral legislative ends as incumbency protection and the preservation of distinct communities of interest, and essentially serves to insulate the State from a successful statutory challenge. There is no small irony in the fact that the Court's decision to intrude into the State's districting process comes in response to a lawsuit brought on behalf of white voters who have suffered no history of exclusion from North Carolina's political process, and whose only claims of harm are at best rooted in speculative and stereotypical assumptions about the kind of representation they are likely to receive from the candidates that their neighbors have chosen.
V
It is, of course, irrelevant whether we, as judges, deem it wise policy to create majority-minority districts as a means of assuring fair and effective representation to minority voters. We have a duty to respect Congress' considered judgment that such a policy may serve to effectuate the ends of the constitutional Amendment that it is charged with enforcing. We should also respect North Carolina's conscientious effort to conform to that congressional determination. Absent some demonstration that voters are being denied fair and effective representation as a result of their race, I find no basis for this Court's intervention into a process by which federal and state actors, both black and white, are jointly attempting to resolve difficult questions of politics and race that have long plagued North Carolina. Nor do I see how our constitutional tradition can
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