Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner:

Of all the defects in last week’s decision upholding South Carolina’s gerrymandered 1st Congressional District, none is more depressing than the U.S. Supreme Court’s debasement of the term “good faith.” As The Post and Courier reported, a 6-3 majority of the court reversed because the lower court in Charleston “did not credit the South Carolina Legislature with a presumption of good faith.” The words “good faith” are the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision, repeated 12 times in the majority opinion.

But what does “good faith” mean? In ordinary English and legal terminology, “good faith” means “honesty,” “integrity” and “fair dealing.”

That is exactly what gerrymandering is not. Gerrymandering is manipulating the drawing of election district lines to give your team — usually your political party — an unfair advantage. It is done all the time, but being commonplace does not make it right. The Supreme Court has agreed. In a landmark case a few years ago, the court (led, then as now, by Chief Justice John Roberts) unanimously condemned the practice. Roberts’ opinion said gerrymandering cannot be condoned and is “unjust” and “incompatible with democratic principles.” Ordinary Americans would call it “dishonest” and “crooked.”

In that decision, the court also said partisan gerrymandering is “non-justiciable,” a legal word meaning that federal courts cannot hear lawsuits about partisan gerrymandering because there are no judicial standards for deciding such cases. The court did not say a partisan gerrymander is “constitutional,” just that it is outside the jurisdiction of federal courts to rule on, pro or con.

There was not a single word in that opinion about a legislature’s “good faith” in gerrymandering. How could there be, in an opinion that simply said partisan gerrymanders are outside the court system, no matter how evil they are?,,,