The two parties’ legal arguments have flipped as their power shifted, Professor Fried said.

“The same arguments, exactly, were made on the other side when Democrats were doing this to Republicans,” he said. “This is a prime example that people don’t mean anything that they say, that all arguments are opportunistic.”

These days, both parties are using their power more aggressively than ever, according to a brief filed by 65 current and former state legislators, 26 of them Republicans.

“In recent years, the two major political parties, leveraging the technologies of the modern age, have intentionally and systematically excluded each other from state legislatures like never before,” the brief said. “Democrats rigged the maps in Illinois, Maryland and Rhode Island, while Republicans did so in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.”

The Supreme Court, which has never struck down an election map as a political gerrymander, will consider a case challenging the voting districts for Wisconsin’s State Assembly drawn after Republicans gained complete control of the state government for the first time in more than 40 years.

Republican lawmakers drew maps that helped their party convert very close statewide vote totals into lopsided legislative majorities. In 2012, Republicans won 48.6 percent of the statewide vote for Assembly candidates but captured 60 of the Assembly’s 99 seats.

The phenomenon is commonplace, Mr. Schwarzenegger said.

“It’s a rigged system,” he said. “You have situations where you get 50 percent of the vote but only 35 percent of the seats. That is corrupt. That is incorrect. It’s unfair to the people.”

The plaintiffs challenging Wisconsin’s map are represented by the Campaign Legal Center. Its president, Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said he was “pleased, but not surprised, to see many of America’s most accomplished Republican leaders urging the Supreme Court to rein in excessive partisan gerrymandering.”