Law Commons^™

Lulac On Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

LULAC’s treatment of the partisan gerrymandering question, thus, may be as significant for the continuing divisions and uncertainties it reveals as for the result it achieved. A majority of the Court is willing to grapple with the gerrymandering issue but that majority is internally torn over what makes partisan gerrymandering a constitutional problem and when judicial intervention is appropriate. The Court’s difficulty is understandable. Gerrymandering is a challenge to democratic self-government, but judicial intervention requires a judicially manageable theory of democracy compatible with the Constitution and our political institutions. It remains to be seen whether the Court can agree upon …