Court Opinion

ID: 9430650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:17.114304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.510807
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment.
I join Justice O’Connor’s opinion.
It is not surprising that citizens who are troubled by gerrymandering turn first to the courts for redress. De Tocqueville, that perceptive commentator on our country, observed that “[sjcarcely any question arises in the United States which does not become, sooner or later, a subject of judicial debate.” 1 A. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America 330 (H. Reeve trans. 1961). What I question is the Court’s urge *144to craft a judicial remedy for this perceived “injustice.” In my view, the Framers of the Constitution envisioned quite a different scheme. They placed responsibility for correction of such flaws in the people, relying on them to influence their elected representatives. As Justice Frankfurter wrote when the Court entered this political arena:
“The Framers carefully and with deliberate forethought refused so to enthrone the judiciary. In this situation, as in others of like nature, appeal for relief does not belong here. Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people’s representatives. In any event there is nothing judicially more unseemly nor more self-defeating than for this Court to make in terrorem pronouncements, to indulge in merely empty rhetoric, sounding a word of promise to the ear, sure to be disappointing to the hope.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 270 (1962) (dissenting opinion).