An Excellent Editorial On Redistricting

I fully expected that papers outside Texas might have a harsher take on the Supreme Court’s Texas Redistricting decision than papers in Texas might; after all, members of the legislature that approve the DeLay-backed plan are frequently before the ed boards of the major Texas dailies and I figured some may be content to use more toned-down rhetoric when discussing the decision than other national dalies.

Case in point is the Boston Globe, which published an excellent editorial on redistricting. It begins:

FOR THE SECOND TIME this week, a splintered US Supreme Court yesterday made America a little more partisan, a little less democratic.

Taking on the Texas redistricting case, the justices scattered like water bugs, producing five different opinions. A majority acknowledged the obvious: Republicans, pushed by US Representative Tom DeLay, capitalized on their new majorities in the Texas Legislature in 2003 to redraw the lines of the state’s 32 congressional districts with one goal in mind: to increase the number of Republicans in the US House. They knew what they were doing; in the 2004 election, the GOP membership in the delegation grew by six seats.

The court yesterday agreed that the motive was purely political, and that the Republican mapmakers had drawn several long, narrow districts that look like bent straws to achieve their aims, making a mockery of the compactness that is a recognized goal of redistricting.

Even so, most of the justices threw up their hands. They were staring at one of the most heavy-handed political power grabs in the history of Congress, but they said they couldn’t figure out a standard by which to declare it an unconstitutional political gerrymander.

Excellent work by the Globe’s editorial writers. And, they’re right. The justices threw up their hands and refused to “figure out a standard” by which to declare it an unconstitutional political gerrymander.

I wonder what would have happened in cases like Miranda v. Arizona, Roe v. Wade, or  Brown vs. Board of Education if the court had thrown up its hands and failed to try to figure out a standard to put a stop to injustices?

This case was no different; a different outcome, however, would have been possible had a few more of the justices had a little more courage to tred into this particular bay of uncharted waters.