The Law and Philosophy Behind Redistricting

As you may have already seen, this project’s title mentions “fair” redistricting, but I have thus far always put the word “fair” in quotation marks. This is because there is no easy way to determine what type of system is “fair”. In fact, Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in the supreme court case Vieth v. Jubelirer states that: “no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged” in the 18 years since a previous case assumed that some standards must exist. In essence, Scalia is saying that there is no legitimate metric to decide what constitutes “fair” redistricting.

Because of this conundrum, the first few weeks of my project will be devoted to studying the background of modern redistricting. I am starting with the Supreme Court’s interpretations of redistricting law, deciding what is legal and what constitutes an illegal gerrymander. I will then delve into philosophy, to decide what political theories can be applied to the concept of redistricting.