Gerrymandering Goes Back to Court

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

Slate Audio

News Commentary,, Government, News

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2017

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

When the Supreme Court term opens next month, perhaps no issue will be more urgent – and more complicated – than voting rights. One of the first cases the justices will hear is Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to the 2011 redrawing of district lines in Wisconsin. While the Court has struck down racially-motivated gerrymanders in the past, no election map has ever been rejected as a purely partisan gerrymander. And recent developments have some court watchers concerned that Justice Anthony Kennedy may still not be ready to do that. Our guest this episode is Richard Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, and curator of the must-read Election Law Blog.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	everyone who's putting their faith in Justice Kennedy to save voting rights in this country
0:06.8	is putting a lot of weight where it might not be warranted.
0:12.3	Hi, and welcome back to Amicus Slate Supreme Court podcast. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover the courts
0:19.5	and the law for Slate.com.
0:22.3	With only a few short weeks to go before the first Monday in October,
0:26.5	it seems like a pretty good time to come back from our summer hiatus
0:30.3	and deal with that little thing we call the 2017 term.
0:35.1	Now, a lot has happened since we left you in June. And as the justices make their way back from their
0:40.7	summer vacations, we're headed into what may well be the blockbuster-iest term in a very long while.
0:48.1	And no issue is more complicated and more urgent this term than voting rights. It's an issue that
0:53.9	tends to either glaze you over or make you set your own hair on fire. And so our guest today is more likely to steer you, we hope, toward the latter of these two options. Rick Hassan is the Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California
1:11.4	Irvine. He's the curator of the must-read election law blog. He has an upcoming book about
1:17.2	Antonin Scalia that will be out in the spring and hopefully here to give us a lay of the voting
1:22.7	rights land and talk us through some big cases on the docket this term. So Rick Hassan, welcome back to the show.
1:30.2	Thank you so much for having me on again. So I want to start where I started in the intro, which is this is a big, big term, 2017. If only because at least with respect to voting, this may be the most consequential term in
1:45.0	decades. Am I overstating that?
1:47.6	Well, I think on the question of partisan gerrymandering, this is the moment. That is when
1:55.3	party is being used to draw district lines and whether or not that is something the courts
2:00.6	are going to police.
2:01.6	The big case, Gildy Whitford, coming up.
2:04.7	On other cases, including a case out of Ohio, and now we know the Texas redistricting cases
2:11.9	are going back to the Supreme Court, not clear if there'll be blockbuster in that area.
	...

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