Citation
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Race, Place, and Power, 68 Stan. L. Rev. 1323 (2016).
Abstract
In the breakthrough case of Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that minority groups that are residentially segregated and electorally polarized are entitled to districts in which they can elect their preferred candidates. While the legal standard for vote dilution has been clear ever since, the real-world impact of the Court’s decision has remained a mystery. Scholars have failed to answer basic empirical questions about the operation of the Gingles framework — including whether minorities’ descriptive representation improved as a result of the case, and if so, whether this improvement came about through the mechanisms of racial segregation and polarization that the Court contemplated.
This Article fills this gap by carrying out the first large-scale empirical study of the Gingles framework, examining the relationship between residential segregation, electoral polarization, the creation of majority-minority districts, and minority descriptive representation across American jurisdictions over the last several decades.