The Quantitative Empirics of Redistricting Litigation: Knowledge, Threats to Knowledge, and the Need for Less Districting

Abstract

The Civil Rights Movement had a variety of transformative effects on the way federal courts hear and decide cases; among them was the introduction of quantitative analysis as a staple of certain types of high-profile adjudication, particularly in redistricting cases. The first judicial foray into regulating the drawing of electoral districts-the "one person, one vote" line of cases-was premised on an equality norm expressed in explicitly numerical terms. In these cases, the Supreme Court settled on numerical guidelines requiring only simple arithmetic to implement. Since then, however, the federal judiciary has engaged with increasingly complicated quantitative measurements and statistical techniques, first in the racial vote dilution cases, then in the "overuse of race" cases, then in the partisan gerrymandering cases.