Christopher M. Re

Voting and Vice: Criminal Disenfranchisement and the Reconstruction Amendments

121 Yale L.J. 1584 (2012). The Reconstruction Amendments are justly celebrated for transforming millions of recent slaves into voting citizens. Yet this legacy of egalitarian enfranchisement had a flip side. In arguing that voting laws should not discriminate on the basis of morally insignificant statuses, such as race, supporters of the Reconstruction Amendments emphasized the legitimacy of retributive disenfranchisement as...