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THE ROLE OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT, voting rights questions, and the most important legal issues related to race and redistricting seemed largely settled in the light of Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). All that changed dramatically in the mid-1990s.
Whether we assign the principal reason for this change as outrage at the shape of some of the 1990s' districts that were carefully crafted to make the election of minority candidates near certain, or racist backlash to the dramatic minority gains in descriptive representation that occurred in 1992 and earlier, or simply the inevitable spillover into the voting rights arena of the ongoing discontent of the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court with earlier Courts' uses of the Civil War Amendments as a justification for various kinds of affirmative action, there can be no doubt that the previously arcane issue of districting became part of both the legal and political agenda in a way that it had not been since the years immediately following Baker v. Carr.
The aim of this volume is to contribute to both the public and scholarly debate about voting rights and race and redistricting by focusing on the "on the ground" realities rather than on discussion of constitutional jurisprudence in the abstract.
About the Author
The editor, Bernard Grofman, is an authority on American politics, comparative election systems, and social choice theory. He has served as an expert witness or court-appointed consultant in state legislative and congressional lawsuits in 11 states. Grofman has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of California–Irvine since 1980. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, visiting professor at the University of Michigan and at the University of Washington, and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, and at a number of universities outside the U.S. His past research has dealt with mathematical models of group decision making, legislative representation, electoral rules, and redistricting. He has also been involved in modeling individual and group information processing and decision heuristics, and he has written on the intersection of law and social science, especially the role of expert witness testimony and the uses of statistical evidence. Currently he is working on comparative politics and political economy. He is co-author of two books published by Cambridge University Press and co-editor of 15 other books; he has published over 200 research articles and book chapters. Professor Grofman is a past president of the Public Choice Society. He is a co-recipient (with Chandler Davidson) of the Richard Fenno Prize of the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association for best book published in 1994 in the field of legislative studies (Quiet Revolution In The South) and is a Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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About the Book
A portrait of how the 1990s round of redistricting treated the racial and linguistic minorities that had been given special protections by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, primarily African-Americans, but also Native Americans,...
A portrait of how the 1990s round of redistricting treated the racial and linguistic minorities that had been given special protections by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, primarily African-Americans, but also Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and those of Spanish heritage. Throughout the volume, the primary focus is on the practical politics of redistricting and its consequences for racial representation. Almost all the authors have been directly involved in the 1990s redistricting process either as a legislator, a member of the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department, a member of a districting commission, or, most commonly, as an expert witness or lawyer in voting rights cases. All bring to bear special insights as well as insider knowledge of Congressional and state redistricting.
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CONTENTS. PART ONE. Theoretical and Empirical Issues. ELECTING MINORITY-PREFERRED CANDIDATES TO LEGISLATIVE OFFICE Lisa Handley, Bernard Grofman and Wayne Arden.. REPRESENTATION AND AMBITI
CONTENTS. PART ONE. Theoretical and Empirical Issues. ELECTING MINORITY-PREFERRED CANDIDATES TO LEGISLATIVE OFFICE Lisa Handley, Bernard Grofman and Wayne Arden.. REPRESENTATION AND AMBITION IN THE NEW AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS Matthew M. Schousen, David T. Canon, and Patrick J. Sellers. ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF VOTING-RIGHTS-RELATED DISTRICTING ON DEMOCRATIC STRENGTH IN THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Bernard Grofman and Lisa Handley. PART TWO. Legal and Enforcement Issues. VOTING RIGHTS IN THE 1990s by Bernard Grofman and Lisa Handley. POST-1990 REDISTRICTINGS AND THE PRECLEARANCE REQUIREMENT OF SECTION 5 OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT by Mark A. Posner. PART THREE. Case Studies. PREDICTABLY UNPREDICTABLE: The Alaskan Supreme Court and Reapportionment Tuckerman Babcock. REAPPORTIONMENT WARS: Party, Race, and Redistricting in California, 1971-1992 Morgan Kousser. REAPPORTIONMENT STRATEGIES IN THE 1990s: The Case of Georgia Robert A. Holmes. RACE AND REPRESENTATIONAL DISTRICTING IN LOUISIANA Richard L. Engstrom and Jason E. Kirksey. CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING IN NORTH CAROLINA Patrick J. Sellers, David T. Canon and Matthew M. Schousen. LEGISLATIVE AND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTING IN SOUTH CAROLINA Orville Vernon Burton. THE POLITICS OF RACE: The Virginia Redistricting Experience, 1991-1997 Winnett W. Hagens. PART FOUR. Districting Commissions and Minority Empowerment. IS THERE A BETTER WAY TO REDISTRICT? Donald Stokes. NEW YORK CITY REDISTRICTING: A View from Inside Alan Gartner. Indexed References. Indexed Case List. Subject Index. About the Contributors.
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"...this volume makes a strong contribution to the rapidly growing literature on race and redistricting...for those seeking a more complete picture of race-conscious redistricting, with an emphasis... | More »
"...this volume makes a strong contribution to the rapidly growing literature on race and redistricting...for those seeking a more complete picture of race-conscious redistricting, with an emphasis on the nuts and bolts of the process, this volume will prove to be an important resource."
Keith J. Bybee, The Law and Politics Review, June 1999.
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Pages 420
Year: 1998
LC Classification: JK1341 .R33
Dewey code: 328.73'07345--dc21
BISAC: SOC031000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations
BISAC: POL008000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Elections
Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-262-0
Price: USD 32.00
Hard Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-123-4
Price: USD 39.00
eBook
ISBN: 978-0-87586-265-1
Price: USD 32.00
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