Guardians of Redistricting: Explaining decisions of courts and redistricting commissions
This project investigates the decisions of federal judges and redistricting commissioners in the redistricting process. The project relies on interviews with federal judges and redistricting commissioners in order to determine how partisan considerations may or may not play a role in their decisions. This study is part of a larger research agenda that includes a dataset the principal investigator has gathered containing every published federal district court decision on redistricting from 1980 to the present, as well as a companion analysis of votes by commissioners on redistricting commissions. Interviews of no less than 150 federal judges were conducted around the country in the summer and fall of 2006, with many of them performed in person, and others by telephone or by mail. Many legal scholars assume that judges act as nonpartisan arbiters who simply referee legislatures redistricting actions. Many nonpartisan reform groups hold similar assumptions about the ability of redistricting commissions to both avoid partisan bickering and create plans that survive judicial scrutiny. But little research has been performed to see whether commissions or courts do in fact operate with nonpartisan alacrity. This study is unique in that no other research on judicial conduct in redistricting has attempted to utilize both interviews of judges and statistical analyses of redistricting court decisions. Nor has any research systematically measured partisan behavior in redistricting commissions. As past judicial research illustrates, interviews can provide a fuller framework for understanding court action. Furthermore, because little or no media accounts of redistricting commission operations exist, interviews of the commissioners themselves, and the documents they can point to that the commission generated, will be essential to both conducting an analysis of commission decisions and measuring the extent of partisan behavior. The study of government institutions responsible for redistricting oversight has never been more important than it is today. The partisan polarization that has marked recent elections and public policy disputes has spilled over into redistricting, creating acrimony and controversy in several states. Lawsuits and efforts to depoliticize the process continue unabated. The broader impact of this study is that it can provide states with an idea of how the alternatives to legislative redistricting operate. Determining the extent to which courts and commissions engage in partisan behavior has important implications for how states and/or the federal government decide on a process for line-drawing, which in turn, has a huge effect on who gets elected. This project should help us ascertain the role of partisanship in judicial behavior and commission behavior in redistricting.
