THE BOUNDARIES OF RACE - POLITICAL-GEOGRAPHY IN LEGAL ANALYSIS

American jurists and legal scholars often assume that local government s are mere administrative conveniences that exist at the pleasure of s tate legislatures, and that local boundaries are entirely arbitrary an d largely inconsequential. At the same time, the same people often tre at local governments as if they were sacrosanct, ''natural'' entities. In this Article, Professor Ford exposes the equivocation that underli es the American law of local government, and traces it back to a tensi on between two opposing conceptions of ''political space.'' This conce ptual equivocation is more than an academic embarrassment - it has pro found consequences for race relations in America. Drawing on an econom ic model, Professor Ford demonstrates that, in a world in which racism had been eliminated, institutional inattention to the political chara cter of space would result in the perpetuation of racial segregation w ith all of its attendant problems. What follows is a detailed discussi on of the Supreme Courths local-government jurisprudence, from which i t appears that the Justices' inability to sort out their conceptions o f 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 d ecisionmaking. But though the legal situation is troubled, Professor F ord is hopeful that it is not beyond repair. He identifies legal prece dent for a sophisticated approach to the complexities of political spa ce that could go some way toward solving the problem. The Article conc ludes with a series of proposals intended to show how the courts and t he country might begin to chart a course toward the ideal of a raciall y desegregated society.