In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark
Davis v. Bandemer decision in 1986, which opened the door to partisan gerrymandering claims under the Equal Protection Clause,
Political Gerrymandering and the Courts arrives as a vital resource. Edited by political scientist Bernard Grofman, this 1990 volume—the third in the Agathon series on representation—gathers leading scholars, lawyers, and practitioners to dissect the legal, statistical, and practical challenges of curbing partisan districting abuses.
Grofman's introduction sets the stage by outlining unresolved issues, from justiciability to evidentiary standards, arguing that courts can and should strike down only the most extreme cases without wading into every political dispute. Gordon Baker traces the "unfinished reapportionment revolution," linking gerrymandering to the one-person, one-vote legacy of Baker v. Carr, while emphasizing a "sense of unfairness" in bizarre district shapes.
A core section tackles "What Does Bandemer Mean?" Daniel Hays Lowenstein critiques Justice White's plurality opinion for its conceptual gaps, proposing protections mainly for "outcast" political groups rather than routine major-party battles. Grofman counters with a practical reading focused on sustained vote-seat disparities.
The book's strength lies in its toolkit for measurement. Richard Niemi explains the swing ratio—how a party's vote share translates to seats—and applies it to detect bias. Charles Backstrom, Leonard Robins, and Scott Eller advocate a statewide baseline: ensuring the majority party wins a majority of seats at a bare 50%+1 vote share. Michael McDonald and Richard Engstrom offer a symmetry test, comparing expected seats for Democrats and Republicans under neutral plans. Gordon Baker and geographer Richard Morrill push a "totality of circumstances" approach, weighing compactness, community integrity, and election outcomes.
Real-world applications ground the theory. For Indiana's 1980s State House districts, Niemi and John Wilkerson measure compactness via longest-axis circles and perimeters, revealing gerrymandering evidence. In California, Thomas Hofeller and Grofman compare 1980, 1982, and 1984 congressional plans using dispersion and polygon scores, showing the 1973 Masters' Plan as the most compact. Samuel Kernell and Grofman analyze 1978-1984 voting predictability, while Baker reviews the Masters' criteria—like preserving geographic regions and communities of interest—that balanced fairness and competition.
Peter Schuck questions judicial fixes altogether, calling gerrymandering a "political problem without judicial solution," and Bruce Cain weighs practitioner, theorist, and reformer views. With references, indexes, and data tables (e.g., expected vs. actual Democratic seats across states), this 350-page work equips attorneys, judges, and analysts for 1990s redistricting battles. Whether debating swing ratios or bizarre maps, it provides balanced tools to navigate the thicket—neither naive reformism nor cynical resignation. Ideal for political scientists, election lawyers, and policymakers tracking democracy's districting dilemmas.
