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Race and Redistricting: The Shaw-Cromarlie cases. By Tinsley E. Yarbrough. Landmark Law cases and American Society. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 2002. Pp. xiv, 225. Paper, $14.95, 0-7006-12I9-X; cloth, $29.95, ISBN 0-7006-1218-i.)
Race and Redistricting is a tightly focused chronicle of the lengthy court battle over North Carolina's serpentine Twelfth Congressional District, which wound the 165-mile length of Interstate 85 between Durham and Gastonia prior to its shortening to 105 miles in 1997. The district was created by the General Assembly in 1992, and Duke law professor Robinson Everett challenged its constitutionality on the grounds that it was a race-based gerrymander. Everett's tenacity resulted in three Supreme Court cases, Shaw v. Reno (1993), Shaw v. Hunt (1996), and Cromarlie v. Hunt (2001).
The 1990 census entitled North Carolina to an additional congressional representative but also gave the legislature the unenviable task of Grafting districts that would...