ABSTRACT
The United Sates (US) Supreme Court has laid out several legal requirements over the years for redistricting. Mark Twain, perhaps America’s greatest humorist, was merciless in making fun of politicians in general and members of the US Congress in particular. Popular sovereignty is the idea that all legitimate governmental authority comes as a free grant from the people and that the people can reclaim that authority if government becomes neglectful or abusive of it. Americans began their own thinking about politics from these Locke an ideas of popular sovereignty and legislative supremacy. As tensions grew in the years immediately preceding the revolution, Americans came to see all political power as dangerous and power held by any but the people’s most direct representatives as especially dangerous. The Articles of Confederation, drafted in Congress in 1777, although not adopted by all of the states until 1781, were meant to set out the national powers and distinguish them from the powers of the states.
