Shaw v. Reno and the Real World of Redistricting and Representation

Abstract

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion in Shaw v. Reno has been widely seen as a radical departure from precedent-an indication that strengthening minority voting rights is no longer the only achievement of the Second Reconstruction safe from congressional or judicial attack. It is true that the abstract, deeply ambiguous, and often unreflective opinion suggested only vague and unworkable standards that have led to much-heightened judicial intrusion into the political process, and that it has encouraged a cruelly ironic interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, an interpretation surely unintended by the Framers, that aims to undermine the sharpest minority gains in politics since the First Reconstruction.