TRENDS: The Geography of Law: Understanding the Origin of State and Federal Redistricting Cases

• Author: James G. Gimpel,Patrick C. Wohlfarth,Tristan M. Hightower
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/10659129211029723
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211029723

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Article

Where do redistricting cases originate? And does their

uneven distribution across space tell us something impor-

tant about the impetus for these disputes? As late as 1960,

courts played a minimal role in the politics of redistrict-

ing. A surprising number of states had not updated their

legislative boundaries to account for sweeping popula-

tion changes for more than a decade. Malapportionment

was the norm, not the exception. Almost every state leg-

islature was malapportioned, as were the state congres-

sional delegations (David and Eisenberg 1961; Goldberg

1962; McConnell 2000). Since the U.S. Supreme Court

opened the door to the justiciability of claims of unfair

apportionment in 1962, courts’ dockets have been regu-

larly stocked with redistricting cases working their way

through both state and federal court systems.

Yet, in subsequent decades, grievances about redis-

tricting abound across the states, but we do not see litiga-

tion arising uniformly across the nation’s terrain. Why is

this so? Given the critical link between the contours of

legislative districts and representation and that the politi-

cal manipulation of the redistricting process is the norm,

why does litigation appear so unevenly throughout the

country? Part of the answer must be that the geographic

and temporal origins of redistricting complaints offer

important insight into the history and development of

redistricting litigation and partisan competition in the

U.S. political system.

Most lower courts in the United States have explicit

territorial jurisdictions; they cannot hear just any case but

consider cases that arise within their limited geographic

domain. Thus, where cases originate offers valuable

information about them. Location may not matter to

every outcome of interest, but if a particular legal com-

plaint repeatedly arises in one area but is never voiced in

another, there may be important differences about the

locales that can explain the pattern.

For this research, we gathered data on every federal

and state court case since 1960 that adjudicated disputes

over the redistricting of congressional and state legisla-

tive, local government, and school district boundaries.

This undertaking is important because legal complaints

about redistricting arise neither randomly nor evenly

1029723PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211029723Political Research QuarterlyGimpel et al.

research-article2021

1University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Corresponding Author:

James G. Gimpel, Department of Government, University of

Maryland, 3140 Tydings Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Email: jgimpel@umd.edu

The Geography of Law:

Understanding

the Origin of State and

Federal Redistricting Cases

James G. Gimpel1, Tristan M. Hightower1,

and Patrick C. Wohlfarth1

Abstract

Knowing where legal complaints arise can tell us something about them and reveal clues about their conditions

of origin. In this paper, we examine the geographic origins of litigation challenging the boundaries of electoral

districts—an increasingly salient and prominent source of political conflict. We construct an original dataset of

all redistricting cases in state and federal courts nationwide, from 1960 to 2019. We show that redistricting

litigation surfaces not just in states where there are regions undergoing rapid population change or that have a

greater proportion of aggrieved racial minority groups but also in areas where there is close partisan competition.

The filing of redistricting litigation is highly responsive to hypercompetitive political environments, suggesting

that parties pursue judicial intervention vigorously when political power hangs in the balance and not simply

due to demographic changes associated with decennial population measurement. These findings have important

implications for understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of redistricting politics and the consequences of

intense partisan electoral competition in the United States.

Keywords

redistricting, law, states, legal geography, gerrymandering, state legislative districts, congressional districts

TRENDS: 2021, Vol. 74(4) 779 –794

780 Political Research Quarterly 74(4)

2 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)

across the country. Yet, it is not obvious why this is so.

One might think, for instance, that specific kinds of crim-

inal cases arise in particular courts in direct proportion to

where (geographically) particular kinds of crimes are

committed. But there are many reasons why this corre-

spondence is weak, including the way criminal activity is

policed, decisions by prosecutors on which cases to pur-

sue, and decisions by jurists about which cases ought to

command their attention (Henning and Feder 2005;

Kutateladze et al. 2014; Lynch 2011; Nisbett and Cohen

1996; Shermer and Johnson 2010). Redistricting com-

plaints, in particular, do not always emerge in places that

we might expect based on observations of unequally

sized districts and other alleged infringements on fairness

in representation. A variety of theories may explain the

gap between apparent slights created by the redistricting

process and the emergence of litigation aimed at a rem-

edy, but no one can doubt that there is puzzling variability

across jurisdictions that requires explanation.

The results show that states with large populations

undergoing change in the intercensal period certainly

stimulate redistricting complaints when new plans are

enacted. States with large minority populations see a high

volume of litigation, which is not surprising given the

large volume of complaints about racial fairness and rep-

resentation. Yet, we also find that the political character-

istics of states explain substantial demand for court action

on redistricting. Specifically, even after controlling for

the degree of disproportionality across legislative dis-

tricts, states that are closely divided between the two par-

ties see many more redistricting lawsuits flow to the court

system than states where the balance of partisanship tips

more predictably toward a single party. This is likely

reflective of the fact that redistricting plans are always

more controversial when the balance of congressional

and state legislative seats hangs in the balance, and a

favorable court ruling could tip the scale. Taken together,

these results speak to the importance of geographic varia-

tion to the incidence of litigation, and, in particular, how

partisan electoral competition fuels challenges to elec-

toral maps in the United States.

Geographic Variation and the Legal

System

Our investigation takes up an examination of the geogra-

phy of redistricting litigation in state and federal courts.

There is growing interest in the geography of law, enabled

by additional geographic data and new analytical tech-

niques that advance both theory and hypothesis testing

(Fontana 2016; King, Johnson, and McGeever 2010;

Lemos and Young 2018; Rhee and Scott 2018; Schultheis

2014; Stephanopoulos 2012; Stoler and San Roman 2016;

Yu 2017). Decades of research have established that

courts’ dockets across most venues of law are connected

to the particular social, economic, and political settings in

which they operate (Atkins and Glick 1976; Brace and

Hall 2001, 397; Brace, Hall, and Langer 2001; Dumas

and Haynie 2012; Grossman and Sarat 1971; Heydebrand

1976). Certainly, previous research has found that citizen

litigiousness in civil cases is not uniform across U.S. judi-

cial systems. Caseloads vary across states due to a num-

ber of factors, including the professionalization of the

courts, and characteristics of the states’ political, social,

and economic environments (Dumas 2016; Yates,

Tankersley, and Brace 2010). Similarly, U.S. Supreme

Court cases do not emerge randomly from the various

lower courts but reflect a range of factors, including the

strategic choices made by justices (e.g., R. C. Black and

Owens 2009; Epstein and Knight 1998; Perry 1991) and

litigants (e.g., Boyd 2015; Caldeira and Wright 1988), the

prestige of particular state court systems, as well as the

various political, social, and economic circumstances

responsible for the events that generated the original

complaint (Boyd 2017; Brunn et al. 2000).

Related research in the geography of law has noted

that neighboring states sharing political and cultural val-

ues more regularly draw upon precedent from nearby

states than from those at a distance (Caldeira 1985, 1988;

Stoler and San Roman 2016). Communication across

state judicial systems most often occurs among those

proximate to each other, sharing cultural similarities.

These communication flows are demonstrated by case

citations showing that courts respect the decisions of

other courts with which they agree with and share tradi-

tions (Caldeira 1985; Harris 1985, 450; Hinkle and

Nelson 2016). This research has established that some

courts lead and others follow, with habits of citation

developing along network paths between geographically

proximate nodes (Caldeira 1988).

The perspective that lawsuits arise out of the political

and socioeconomic cultures of states and localities con-

trasts with the idea that cases emerge solely out of evi-

dence of malfeasance, wrongdoing, crime, or injustice.

Most courts do not have control over their own caseloads

and must respond to those complaints initiated by liti-

gants. When bringing complaints, these litigants must

commonly reside within each court’s geographic jurisdic-

tion, though not in all circumstances. Given the territori-

ally bounded nature of most courts, the political,

economic, and social characteristics of populations can

explain variations in legal traditions (Grossman and Sarat

1971). Law has an ecology that dictates its development

and legal norms (Harris 1985). Users and providers of

legal services vary across space, just as citizens will be

variously tolerant of criminal and civil offenses, reflect-

ing their values (Granovetter 2007; Thomas, Cage, and

Foster 1976). Particular institutional patterns and