Kant's Deontology

Immanuel Kant, in his 1785 book Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, describes a deontologist view of morals. He argues that a good will is the only thing that is inherently good. This means that all good actions must be the result of a good will.

He stresses this point by discussing maxims for living one’s life. Any maxim that is good to follow, Kant argues, must be good universally. If it were to be made into a universal law, it must not contradict itself.

This leads to the concept of the categorical imperative. This concept describes actions that are absolutely necessary without consideration to a specific end. Kant believes in the dignity of the individual, so one may have a duty to protect that dignity, even if such action will not succeed in achieving this goal. In other words, it is imperative that one completes the action, whether or not the action will lead to a desired result.

One of the best examples of applying this to redistricting would be the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 2 of this act creates a requirement for minority protection in redistricting (by creating majority-minority districts). These days, however, this can lead to a problem for minorities. Voters of a certain race can be packed together into one district in such a way that they have a reduced voice in government. Creating districts that are dominated by one racial group gives that group lots of political power in just a few districts, when they could have instead maintained significant influence in many districts.

Kant would not allow this problem to get in the way of legislation like the VRA. Despite creating a loophole that reduces minority representation, and thereby opposing its own intended purpose, the VRA would be necessary. Passing such legislation would be a categorical imperative.

Partisan Gerrymandering

While the Supreme Court has clearly shown to be both justiciable and illegal, the same is not true of an equally pernicious redistricting tactic: partisan gerrymandering. Although it is not perfectly defined, partisan gerrymandering tends to be the redrawing of district lines in such a way that one party may maximize the number of seats that it can take in election. This party will usually pack most of the opposing party’s voters in to just a few districts. The remaining districts often have similar numbers of voters from each party, carefully allocated so that the gerrymandering party secures narrow victories consistently.

Much like racial gerrymandering, partisan gerrymandering discriminates against certain voters and makes voting less democratic. The court (and therefore the law), however, views the two very differently.

In the last week, I read the Supreme Court opinions of four pivotal partisan gerrymandering cases. From all of these cases, it became clear that the court still has no metric to rule on partisan gerrymandering claims. Majority opinions have argued that certain metrics for evaluating these claims will not work, but no ruling has ever decided on a metric that does work. Such a metric will have to come from a future case.

Applying the Shaw v. Reno Test for Racial Gerrymandering

In 1995, the Supreme Court put their racial gerrymandering test… to the test, with the case Miller v. Johnson. It had been just two years since the landmark Shaw v. Reno decision created a specific requirement for racial gerrymandering rulings: that race cannot be the only discernible explanation for the way districts were drawn.

Miller v. Johnson brought up an important question for this test: does it still apply if the districts were made to maximize minority representation? The court ruled that it does. This solidified the Shaw test, and further clarified the Constitution’s illegalization of racial gerrymandering.