Winning Without the Courts : Democracy Journal

A call for proportional representation and multi-representative electoral districts.

Winning Without the Courts : Democracy Journal
By Lee Drutman and Aziz Huq


For two decades, the principle of political equality and the conservative Supreme Court majority have been locked in a struggle over the foundational rules of American democracy. And the principle of political equality is losing. Bigly.

With the Supreme Court (and many lower courts) likely to stay conservative for at least a decade (if not longer), any approach to political equality that depends on the courts is a losing battle. And right now, every approach to political equality in the democratic reformer toolkit, from regulating gerrymandering to enforcing voting rights to attempting to limit money in politics, is vulnerable to activist conservative litigation.

It is time for a new approach that does not depend on the Courts to referee the zero-sum partisan voting wars that now dominate our elections—and will for the foreseeable future. The only way to achieve political equality is to change the rules of the game—in ways that get around the conservative courts. This means breaking out, further, of the binary, two-party system, and becoming a proportional, multiparty democracy.

Such a big change is needed because of three fundamental transformations in the American political landscape, which have devastated the prospects for political equality.

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