Voting and vice: criminal disenfranchisement and the Reconstruction Amendments.: An article from: Yale Law Journal

This digital document is an article from Yale Law Journal, published by Yale University, School of Law on May 1, 2012. The length of the article is 40874 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Criminal disenfranchisement's previously overlooked constitutional history illuminates four contemporary legal debates. First, the connection between voting and vice provides new support for the Supreme Court's thoroughly criticized holding that the Constitution endorses criminal disenfranchisement. Second, Reconstruction history suggests that the Constitution's endorsement of criminal disenfranchisement extends only to serious crimes. For that reason, disenfranchisement for minor criminal offenses, such as misdemeanors, may be unconstitutional. Third, the Reconstruction Amendments' common intellectual origin refutes recent arguments by academics and judges that the Fifteenth Amendment impliedly repealed the Fourteenth Amendment's endorsement of criminal disenfranchisement. Finally, the historical relationship between voting and vice suggests that felon disenfranchisement is specially protected from federal regulation but not categorically immune to challenge under the Voting Rights Act.

Citation Details
Title: Voting and vice: criminal disenfranchisement and the Reconstruction Amendments.
Author: Richard M. Re
Publication:Yale Law Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2012
Publisher: Yale University, School of Law
Volume: 121 Issue: 7 Page: 1584(87)

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