Malapportionment Cases News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Court's role is to defend its foundation. nothing is more important than free and fair elections. we're still waits for the census decisions. two other cases to go. there's the case about indian tribes in oklahoma, and how much jurisdiction they have over the state's land. i don't know if the census case would be the last one, but i would gisz it would by. >> my understanding is inside the court chief justice roberts is still reading decisions from the bench. it's not clear if justice kagan will read their dissent. explain that. >> reporter: right now they don't read their dissents, they summa...

Surprise after the oral arguments. certainly it's disappointing for those of us who have pursued litigation in this area and who think that the courts have a central role to play in putting limits on the partisan self-serving manipulation of district design. these cases were two of the most compelling, certainty the north carolina case is the most extreme example of a partisan gerrymander that the supreme court has ever seen. chief justice roberts seems to acknowledge in his majority opinion that it can be reasonably seem to be unjust, as he puts it, but his answer is that the courts cannot co...

Federal epps courts say they have no role to play. >> pete, do you have more? >> reporter: just a couple points. lower courts had ruled there was partisan gerrymandering in at the time ohio and michigan, so undoubtedly it will send those cases back to the lower courts to basically perform last rites on those rulings, and take those rulings away. a couple points here, at the very end of the majority pin, the court says -- we have no commission to allocate political power influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us. the other things toward the end of the...

The courts will not play a role in resolving it. >> we'll talk more about justice kagan's dissent,every, but i want your overall take on the argument that cheever justice john roberts and others are making of why they felt like they could not make a determination on just how much partisan gerrymandering is too much. >> cheever roberts olympic has the doctrine, with the one man/one vote, and that doctrine says when a question has no clear judicial standards and could risk embarrassing the political branches and basically isn't susceptible to resolution, courts are not going to decide it. in bak...

Cases, but not the same for gerrymandering. there's just a few cases where the courts have applied the political doctrine back in the 19th century. the court said, hey, we're not going to decide that, but it's a very, very big deal for the court to say this dock trim which had not been used for malapportionment to racial gerrymandering is suddenly aablied, and here's another -- you asked why did the majority do it? well, the five justices, the majority believe in absolutely good faith -- and it's important to stress it's not a partisan claim -- that there's no clear standard that you can consi...