Cite as: 538 U. S. 254 (2003)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
historical context surrounding the enactment of § 2c renders § 2a(c) toothless. Indeed, it is unclear why the Court examines this historical context at all. Cf. Bank One Chicago, N. A. v. Midwest Bank & Trust Co., 516 U. S. 264, 279 (1996) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("In my view a law means what its text most appropriately conveys, whatever the Congress that enacted it might have 'intended.' The law is what the law says, and we should content ourselves with reading it rather than psychoanalyzing those who enacted it").
The Court also implies that it reads § 2a(c) in the way it does because our decisions in Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186 (1962), Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1 (1964), and Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964), "ushered in a new era in which federal courts were overseeing efforts by badly malapportioned States to conform their congressional electoral districts to the constitutionally required one-person, one-vote standards." Ante, at 268. For Justice Stevens, these decisions explain why Congress passed § 2c. See ante, at 287, 289-290. But these watershed opinions cannot change the meaning of § 2a(c). First, a later development cannot change an unamended statute. See Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U. S. 765, 780-784 (2000) (Scalia, J.). Since § 2a(c) was enacted decades before the Baker line of cases, this subsequent development cannot change the interpretation of § 2a(c).
Second, the Court's decision in Baker v. Carr, supra, rested in large part on the fact that courts were already involved in overseeing apportionment cases. Courts had been "directing" redistricting disputes since well before Baker. Ante, at 268. Indeed, the Court in Baker specifically acknowledged that "[a]n unbroken line of our precedents sustains the federal courts' jurisdiction of the subject matter of federal constitutional claims of this nature." 369 U. S., at 201-202 (citing cases, including Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549 (1946)). In Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S., at 375, for exam-
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