Cite as: 538 U. S. 254 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
pursuant to § 2a(c)(5) because § 2c "appears to prohibit at-large elections." And in Carstens v. Lamm, 543 F. Supp. 68 (Colo. 1982), the District Court reached a substantially identical result, although contemplating that § 2a(c) provided a "stop-gap measure" in the "event that no constitutional redistricting plan exists on the eve of a congressional election, and there is not enough time for either the Legislature or the courts to develop an acceptable plan," id., at 77, and n. 23.
It bears noting that this Court affirmed two of the District Court decisions described above, see Preisler, supra, and Shayer, supra, one without discussing § 2c, and one summarily. And in 1971 we observed in dictum that "[i]n 1967, Congress reinstated the single-member district requirement" that had existed before the enactment of § 2a(c). Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 159, n. 39 (1971).
Of course the implausibility (given the circumstances of its enactment) that § 2c was meant to apply only to legislative reapportionment, and the unbroken unanimity of state and federal courts in opposition to that interpretation, would be of no consequence if the text of § 2c (and of § 2a(c)) unmistakably demanded that interpretation. But it does not. Indeed, it is more readily susceptible of the opposite interpretation.
The clause "there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled" could, to be sure, be so interpreted that the phrase "by law" refers only to legislative action. Its more common meaning, however, encompasses judicial decisions as well. See, e. g., Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 741 (2002) (referring to judicial decisions as "established law" in qualified immunity context); Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524 U. S. 399, 407 (1998) (referring to judicial decisions as "established law" in the attorney-client privilege context); United States v. Frady, 456 U. S. 152, 166 (1982) (referring to the judicially established standard of review for a 28 U. S. C. § 2255 motion as "long-established law"); see
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