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Constitutional Contours of Race and Politics (From Supreme Court Review, P 45-70, 1996, Dennis J. Hutchinson, David A. Strauss, et al, eds. - See NCJ 163692)

NCJ Number
163694
Author(s)
S Issacharoff
Date Published
1996
Length
26 pages
Annotation
U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the constitutionality of race-based boundaries for congressional districts are examined, with emphasis on two 1994 decisions and the Court's efforts to determine a clear standard on the issue.
Abstract
Litigation has generally produced a four-one-four division on the Court. As a result, the decisions rest on Justice O'Connor's enigmatic and idiosyncratically fact- based views in particular cases and her refusal either to reject all reliance on race as unconstitutional or to impose a constitutional template of compactness on redistricting. In its 1994 decision in Miller v. Johnson, the Court reviewed Georgia's redistricting and reiterated that statutory inroads through the Voting Rights Act will not insulate racial classifications from constitutional review. In Hays v. Louisiana, the Court chose to trivialize the best-developed factual record for clarifying a constitutional command and instead issued an inconsequential standing opinion that disposed of the case at bar. These and other decisions represent the Court's inconclusive effort to find a method of downplaying the apparent racial divide in United States politics. This repeated yet indecisive entry into redistricting issues involves real institutional costs. The absence of identifiable, guiding constitutional principles threatens the integrity of judicial review over the political process. Footnotes

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