Gerrymandering

[Montmorency]

So you're describing how a Catholic king relied on Catholic militias and the Protestants got mad and demanded armed Protestant militias (sounds familiar, where have we seen something like that...?).

The Founding Fathers discussed what they meant by the Second Amendment, and its antecedents in the state constitutions. It was for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the state and local militias, which at the time were integral to preserving and expanding a White Country. Militias were good for three things, and exactly three things for a hundred years before and after 1776:

1. Kill Injuns
2. Hold down the Negro
3. Round up lawbreakers

That's why militias were absolutely essential to daily life (and why they would provision arms if necessary). We don't have that kind of (white supremacist) wild country anymore. Well, some of us are trying not to.

Yes, English law had a certain influence on the Constitution and legal practice, though it wasn't some automatic wholesale transfer. The impeachment clause, for example, is a formula directly lifted from English law dating back to the Middle Ages. What I mean to say is that they were deliberate about this selection.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the case at hand.

[a completely inoffensive name]

We fucked

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

We fucked

You mean you are ad fornicatiu​, you know the Backroom has rules about language.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You mean you are ad fornicatiu​, you know the Backroom has rules about language.

my bad.

But we did have a straightforward standard on how much Gerrymandering was too much.
Unfortunately, it required basic math. And the court hates math: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ergic-to-math/

[Montmorency]

It was exactly an "automatic wholesale transfer".

I'll admit to being imprecise, but it was a transfer of the pre-existing colonial legal frameworks. 17th-century English common law was the bedrock for the colonies. The legal system of Britain in the 1780s was not grafted onto the new republican form; they were selective.

I have now read both decisions and I remain convinced the majority decision is the legally correct one - your courts are not competent to decide what a "fair" districting plan is because there is no applicable legal standard in a FPTP system.

It is clear the State Legislatures are acting improperly, but that's not actually illegal in the US. Congress needs to pass a Bill which defines how districting should be done to resolve the problem.

Federal courts up to now, as Kagan points out, have repeatedly inserted themselves into the redistricting process to evaluate gerrymanders. You would consider this illegitimate? The judges did not apply their own standards of fairness, but the standards of the states in question. Or, besides the federal c ourts, do you believe that state-level courts are incompetent to review redistricting according to constitutional principles? This is not hypothetical, it too has been done numerous times.

If state courts are competent to do this, so are federal ones. A standard is discernible, indeed has been deployed, the majority just lacks an interest in discerning or employing it.

Congress will not pass a bill to resolve the problem because it is not in the interest of the beneficiaries to do so. As Kagan says:

The majority disagrees, concluding its opinion with a paean to congressional bills limiting partisan gerrymanders. “Dozens of [those] bills have been introduced,” the majority says. Ante, at 33. One was “introduced in 2005 and has been reintroduced in every Congress since.” Ibid. And might be reintroduced until the end of time. Because what all these bills have in common is that they are not laws.

This was a central component of Roberts' specious reasoning and I'm sad to see you take it up. The majority offers no serious constitutional argument against court intervention, only handwringing about the theoretical capacity of Congress to act and the non-existent burden of determining a standard. It does not explain why other courts' standards are not discernible or manageable. They agree that constitutional harms exist in gerrymandering. The decision is plainly partisanship.

[a completely inoffensive name]

They never tackle the question of why would we expect a branch of government to limit its own authority and use of power? Especially when the concept of 'checks and balances' is baked into the Constitution.

Excluding that absurd answer ('Congress will regulate itself') we are left with two choices, the Executive and the Judicial. When you follow up on this, it is clear what the final answer is.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

They never tackle the question of why would we expect a branch of government to limit its own authority and use of power? Especially when the concept of 'checks and balances' is baked into the Constitution.

Excluding that absurd answer ('Congress will regulate itself') we are left with two choices, the Executive and the Judicial. When you follow up on this, it is clear what the final answer is.

As I pointed out to Monty, other legislatures do regulate themselves. This is the case even in the UK where their is no Constitution requiring them to do so.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I'll admit to being imprecise, but it was a transfer of the pre-existing colonial legal frameworks. 17th-century English common law was the bedrock for the colonies. The legal system of Britain in the 1780s was not grafted onto the new republican form; they were selective.

Indeed, they were selective but the assumption is inheritance. The English Bill of Rights enumerates a "Right to bear Arms" and clearly distinguishes between legitimate restriction under law of that right and illegitimate infringement by a tyrant. The Bill also distinguishes between a military regulated by Parliament and an illegitimate militia raised without Parliamentary consent - a key point here is that the raising of a militia implies the paying of a militia - which requires a Money Bill. Despite this, since 2008 your Supreme Court has taken the view that an "individual right" to bear arms (which is enumerated in the English Bill of Rights) implies that the legislature cannot legitimately restrict that right.

This seems to me unacceptably interventionist.

Federal courts up to now, as Kagan points out, have repeatedly inserted themselves into the redistricting process to evaluate gerrymanders. You would consider this illegitimate? The judges did not apply their own standards of fairness, but the standards of the states in question. Or, besides the federal c ourts, do you believe that state-level courts are incompetent to review redistricting according to constitutional principles? This is not hypothetical, it too has been done numerous times.

If state courts are competent to do this, so are federal ones. A standard is discernible, indeed has been deployed, the majority just lacks an interest in discerning or employing it.

Congress will not pass a bill to resolve the problem because it is not in the interest of the beneficiaries to do so. As Kagan says:

Yes, I know, I read both decisions - but from what I read the Court has, over several decades, refused to adjudicate on cases of partisan gerrymandering. As Roberts points out, even compact, contiguous districts of equal size will be likely to favour one party over another because certain regions tend to favour certain parties. This is a recognised quality in the UK where the urban areas in the North of England routinely vote Labour so that Conservative votes in those areas are wasted. Redrawing of Constinuancies there could be used to "uncrack" some of the Conservative vote and bring the partisan representation of the region more in line with the actual voter makeup.

We don't consider that legitimate, though.

As to Congress not passing a Bill to make voting districts fairer, other Western Democracies routinely do this and have done for a couple of Centuries - starting with the Great Reform Act in the UK in 1832.

This was a central component of Roberts' specious reasoning and I'm sad to see you take it up. The majority offers no serious constitutional argument against court intervention, only handwringing about the theoretical capacity of Congress to act and the non-existent burden of determining a standard. It does not explain why other courts' standards are not discernible or manageable. They agree that constitutional harms exist in gerrymandering. The decision is plainly partisanship.

In my view the dissenting opinion amounts to handwringing about how Congress is hopelessly corrupt. The majority decision is in line with the previous precedent on partisan gerrymandering, both sides seem to agree to that.

Ultimately, to affect change the Supreme Court would need to establish minimum standards for the drawing of districts which would include compactness, respect for existing political and physical boundaries, contiguous territory and an effort to combine areas of similar geography - i.e. to avoid mixing rural and urban areas so that constituents have similar needs and expectations of their representatives.

Constitutionally this looks like judicial over-reach. The core problem here is political, the US Constitution assumes a basic level of human decency clearly lacking in many modern American politicians and because of this the Constitution doesn't provide for a mechanism of redress outside the legislature. In this case Federal and State Legislatures should couterbalance each other, but they're in cahoots.

As ACIN said.

[Montmorency]

Indeed, they were selective but the assumption is inheritance. The English Bill of Rights enumerates a "Right to bear Arms" and clearly distinguishes between legitimate restriction under law of that right and illegitimate infringement by a tyrant. The Bill also distinguishes between a military regulated by Parliament and an illegitimate militia raised without Parliamentary consent - a key point here is that the raising of a militia implies the paying of a militia - which requires a Money Bill. Despite this, since 2008 your Supreme Court has taken the view that an "individual right" to bear arms (which is enumerated in the English Bill of Rights) implies that the legislature cannot legitimately restrict that right.

This seems to me unacceptably interventionist.

Just to point out, it's clearly an individual right (as in individuals are the ones handling arms) but the purpose of the right is toward upholding the (collective) militias. Militias were a more omnipresent and often informal phenomenon in the Americas, for obvious reasons (Indians and Negroes).

Yes, I know, I read both decisions - but from what I read the Court has, over several decades, refused to adjudicate on cases of partisan gerrymandering. As Roberts points out, even compact, contiguous districts of equal size will be likely to favour one party over another because certain regions tend to favour certain parties.

This is a cop-out. The standards judges have applied are satisfactory. Roberts doesn't explain what's wrong with using the state's own standards in generating and assessing maps. The judges aren't inventing something from thin air.

I also note that refusing to engage with these standards with the effect of preserving (as the majority admits, unusual and extreme) partisan gerrymander is much more political than acting to mitigate a partisan gerrymander.

This is a recognised quality in the UK where the urban areas in the North of England routinely vote Labour so that Conservative votes in those areas are wasted. Redrawing of Constinuancies there could be used to "uncrack" some of the Conservative vote and bring the partisan representation of the region more in line with the actual voter makeup. We don't consider that legitimate, though.

Who is "we"?

As to Congress not passing a Bill to make voting districts fairer, other Western Democracies routinely do this and have done for a couple of Centuries - starting with the Great Reform Act in the UK in 1832.

The practices of other governments are irrelevant to our existing arrangement, as conservative justices tend to emphasize elsewhere in their jurisprudence. The UK has a national health service. That suggests nothing about whether the US will or should establish a national health service, or vice versa that the UK will or should abolish its own.

In my view the dissenting opinion amounts to handwringing about how Congress is hopelessly corrupt. The majority decision is in line with the previous precedent on partisan gerrymandering, both sides seem to agree to that.

No, they don't agree. Previous decisions explicitly did not hold that federal courts lack authority to adjudicate complaints about partisan gerrymandering. The previous jurisprudence amounted to 'Reply hazy, try again.'

Ultimately, to affect change the Supreme Court would need to establish minimum standards for the drawing of districts which would include compactness, respect for existing political and physical boundaries, contiguous territory and an effort to combine areas of similar geography - i.e. to avoid mixing rural and urban areas so that constituents have similar needs and expectations of their representatives.

Constitutionally this looks like judicial over-reach.

How? What in the Constitution are you referring to? What did Roberts refer to? Judges apply tests all the time. And as I said, if state courts are competent to adjudicate the issue with reference to the federal Constitution, so are federal courts. If those courts can apply standards, and Roberts admits there are legitimate constitutional harms arising from the practice of partisan gerrymandering, then exclaiming that judicial review is too difficult and political when it is not difficult, not reliant on individual politics, and inaction has a demonstrable political bias, is clearly a fig leaf to bolster the political power of his party - something that Roberts has done repeatedly in his time on the bench, so no benefit of the doubt warranted.

the Constitution doesn't provide for a mechanism of redress outside the legislature

What in Article III is contradicting here?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yes, English law had a certain influence on the Constitution and legal practice, though it wasn't some automatic wholesale transfer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recept...#United_States

After the 1776 American Revolution, one of the first legislative acts undertaken by each of the newly-independent states was to adopt a "reception statute" that gave legal effect to the existing body of English common law to the extent that the legislation or the constitution had not explicitly rejected English law.

It was exactly an "automatic wholesale transfer".

The entire body of Englich Common and Statute Law is the bedrock upon which the US Constitution sits, the Constitution is the framework upon which all US Law must be hanged.

Rather archaic formulation, I admit, but this is an archaic argument.

Earlier you accused me of being, "Englishman Passionate Defender of What He Imagines Lost Colonies' Constitution to Be". I respectfully submit that you are currently being "American who believes his country is specially and emerged fully formed of nothing."

I have now read both decisions and I remain convinced the majority decision is the legally correct one - your courts are not competent to decide what a "fair" districting plan is because there is no applicable legal standard in a FPTP system.

It is clear the State Legislatures are acting improperly, but that's not actually illegal in the US. Congress needs to pass a Bill which defines how districting should be done to resolve the problem.