Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of Souter, J.
wrong, and while it is entitled to stand under our traditional stare decisis in statutory interpretation, stare decisis does not excuse today's decision to compound Beer's error.14
2
Giving purpose-to-abridge the broader, intended reading while preserving the erroneously truncated interpretation of effect would not even result in a facially irrational scheme. This is so because intent to dilute is conceptually simple, whereas a dilutive abridgment-in-fact is not readily defined and identified independently of dilutive intent. A purpose to dilute simply means to subordinate minority voting power; exact calibration is unnecessary to identify what is intended. Any purpose to give less weight to minority participation in the electoral process than to majority participation is a purpose to discriminate and thus to "abridge" the right to vote. No further baseline is needed because the enquiry goes to the direction of the majority's aim, without reference to details of the existing system.
Dilutive effect, for the reason the majority points out, is different. Dilutive effect requires a baseline against which to compare a proposed change. While the baseline is in theory the electoral effectiveness of majority voters, dilution is not merely a lack of proportional representation, see Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109, 131 (1986) (opinion of White, J.), and we have held that the maximum number of possible majority-minority districts cannot be the standard, see, e. g., Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S., at 925-926. Thus we have held that an enquiry into dilutive effect must rest on some
14 The Court says this "lengthy expedition into legislative history" leaves me "emptyhanded" for the reason that nothing shows that today's notions of vote dilution were particularly in the congressional mind. Ante, at 335, n. 4. But the whole point of the legislative history is that Congress meant to guard against just those discriminatory devices that were as yet untried. Congress did not know what the covered jurisdictions would think up next.
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