Summary: Alongside the Presidential nomination process, the most prominent American political news stories these days are about the heated, high-stakes struggles over redistricting. The modern era of reapportioning state and federal legislative districts began almost exactly a half century ago when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Baker v. Carr (1962). With the Supreme Court recently agreeing to hear a Congressional redistricting case from Texas, this month historian and legal scholar David Stebenne puts today's redistricting battles in historical perspective to understand better this decisive component of American politics.
