The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis

Abstract

American jurists and legal scholars often assume that local governments are mere administrative conveniences that exist at the pleasure of state legislatures, and that local boundaries are entirely arbitrary and largely inconsequential. At the same time, the same people often treat local governments as if they were sacrosanct, ''natural'' entities. In this Article, Professor Ford exposes the equivocation that underlies the American law of local government, and traces it back to a tension between two opposing conceptions of ''political space.'' This conceptual equivocation is more than an academic embarrassment - it has profound consequences for race relations in America. Drawing on an economic model, Professor Ford demonstrates that, in a world in which racism had been eliminated, institutional inattention to the political character of space would result in the perpetuation of racial segregation with all of its attendant problems. What follows is a detailed discussion of the Supreme Courths local-government jurisprudence, from which it appears that the Justices' inability to sort out their conceptions of political space has a very real, and disturbing, impact on the life of the nation. Nor is the problem confined to the courts - it is also reflected in the normative political principles that inform judicial decisionmaking. But though the legal situation is troubled, Professor Ford is hopeful that it is not beyond repair. He identifies legal precedent for a sophisticated approach to the complexities of political space that could go some way toward solving the problem. The Article concludes with a series of proposals intended to show how the courts and the country might begin to chart a course toward the ideal of a racially desegregated society.