Law and Race | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper Dec 1993

Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper

Michigan Law Review

In the discussion that follows, we focus on the case of congressional districting rather than on districting in general. Although we proceed in this manner for the sake of clarity, it is also true that no single, all-purpose normative theory of electoral mechanics will cover every case of democratic representation, from county commissions to mosquito control districts to sovereign legislatures. We do not claim that one can generalize our argument to every sort of election to which the VRA might apply. Yet we think our argument does approximate a theory of general application.

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Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi Dec 1993

Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi

Michigan Law Review

This article attempts to define the constitutional principles that characterize Shaw and to suggest how those principles might be applied in a consistent, meaningful way. Part I, in which we argue that Shaw must be understood to rest on a distinctive conception of the kinds of harms against which the Constitution protects, is the theoretical heart of the article. We call these expressive harms, as opposed to more familiar, material harms. In Part II, we briefly survey the history of previous, largely unsuccessful, efforts in other legal contexts to give principled content to these kinds of harms in redistricting. …

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Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff Dec 1993

Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff

Michigan Law Review

Shaw is no doubt a major opinion that attempts to define limits on the use of racial or ethnic classifications in electoral redistricting. The main thrust of this article is to assess the critical question of whether Shaw renders unconstitutional the type of race-conscious realignment of electoral configurations that have given meaning to the voting rights reforms of the past two decades. In making this assessment, we try to ascertain exactly how the Court has limited the use of race-conscious districting, and we try to determine whether there is any jurisprudential coherence to the Court's latest confrontation with the law …

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Excuses, Excuses: Neutral Explanations Under Batson V. Kentucky, Michael J. Raphael, Edward J. Ungvarsky Oct 1993

Excuses, Excuses: Neutral Explanations Under Batson V. Kentucky, Michael J. Raphael, Edward J. Ungvarsky

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal struggle for racial justice in the United States has always been in part a struggle to determine how best to achieve racial equality. In 1986, in Batson v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court attempted to curb racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges to strike potential members of a jury. The Court mandated procedures for determining whether a prosecutor had struck members of the venire because of their race. The procedures furnished in Batson are quite general, however, and lower courts have used a variety of standards in implementing them. This Article examines how lower …

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If The Eye Offend Thee, Turn Off The Color, John Harrison May 1993