What Justice Kennedy’s Silence Means For The Future Of Gerrymandering

[FuzzyLumpkins]

The Supreme Court is hearing a case on whether partisan gerrymandering can be considered uncons utional, and Kennedy is likely to be the deciding vote. (For more on why, listen to our podcast on the case.) Wisconsin is appealing a decision by a lower court, which ruled that the way Republicans crafted the state’s electoral maps in 2010 was illegal. The attorneys for the state, who are defending the maps, got plenty of questions from Kennedy, while the Wisconsin Democrats, who want the maps struck down, got none. Kennedy spoke 10 times during the state of Wisconsin’s arguments. He asked five questions and made five statements.

“If you get a lot of questions, you’re going to lose,” Adam Liptak, The New York Times’ Supreme Court reporter, told FiveThirtyEight in 2015.

Justices aren’t just asking questions to get information from the lawyers arguing their cases. In some ways, the questions aren’t meant for the lawyers at all. The justices ask questions to signal their positions to their fellow members of the court, and to potentially sway other justices to their side. If they’re skeptical of one side’s argument, they often pepper that side with queries. Chief Justice John Roberts has even described the lawyers as a “backboard” — the questions bounce off them and come right back to the bench.

A body of academic research has confirmed this conventional wisdom, showing empirically that questions from the justices are usually bad news for the party on the receiving end. The number of questions, their length, their linguistic content and even the tone of voice in which they’re asked are all statistically significant factors in predicting the court’s eventual decision.

Bryce Dietrich, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, provided us with data on the questions Kennedy has asked in cases from 1988 to 2014, gathered from transcripts of the oral arguments. There are 5,151 lines in these transcripts that Kennedy directed toward either the pe ioner (the party asking the high court to hear the case) or the respondent (the party that won the case in the lower court) when asking a question.1

That data shows that Kennedy is no different from the rest of the court: You don’t want to be on the receiving end of his questions. When Kennedy votes for the respondent (which would be the Wisconsin Democrats, in this case) he directs 93.3 words to them (57.5 percent of his speech). When he votes against the respondent, he directs 102.0 words to them (61.1 percent of his speech).

And on Tuesday, he directed zero words to the respondent. Historically, he directed zero words toward the party he went on to vote for 272 times, out of 1,022 cases in this data set. He directed zero words toward the party he wound up voting against only 177 times.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...errymandering/

This could be huge.

[boutons_deux]

yeah, the illegit, politicized Oligarchy Four s will vote to make (unlimitied, severe) partisan gerrymandering Cons utional, "settled law", guaranteeing that America will remain ed, and un ably an oligarchy, never again even approaching a representative democracy.

If partisan gerrymandering loses, there remains the question of how to reverse it in red/purple states, and how to manage, AND ENFORCE, legit (re)districting against Repug/oligarchy's eternal commitment to electoral cheating in the face of losing demographics.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...lgorithms.html

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-m...ring-20170404/

so smart people have been addressing districting, but of course, Repug s deny, ignore smart, serious people and science so they can cheat, lie, and kowtow to their BigDonor johns.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

If Kennedy rejects WI partisan gerrymandering and GOP cash flow remains depressed it could be an interesting midterm. All kinds of people are pissed off and rightfully so.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

yeah, the illegit, politicized Oligarchy Four s will vote to make (unlimitied, severe) partisan gerrymandering Cons utional, "settled law", guaranteeing that America will remain ed, and un ably an oligarchy, never again even approaching a representative democracy.

If partisan gerrymandering loses, there remains the question of how to reverse it in red/purple states, and how to manage, AND ENFORCE, legit (re)districting against Repug/oligarchy's eternal commitment to electoral cheating in the face of losing demographics.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...lgorithms.html

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-m...ring-20170404/

so smart people have been addressing districting, but of course, Repug s deny, ignore smart, serious people and science so they can cheat, lie, and kowtow to their BigDonor johns.

Shrill and angry is one thing but repe ive is just boring.