Scholarship@WashULaw

Rewarding Loyalty and the Fifteenth Amendment

Document Type

Blog Posting

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2024

Publication Title

Balkinization

Abstract

In Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Mark Graber re-orients our attention to the constitutional politics behind the Fourteenth Amendment. According to Graber, “proponents of congressional Reconstruction were far more interested in empowering and protecting themselves and white people like themselves than in empowering and protecting persons of color.” In short, racial equality took a backseat to partisan politics, and the former was advanced only when it served the Republican Party’s interests. In support of this claim, Graber de-emphasizes Section One—which he claims was uncontroversial and thus less important—and focuses on the “forgotten” provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment—namely Sections Two, Three, and Four—which sought to entrench the Republican Party in power. I’m confident that others in this symposium will take issue with Graber’s defenestration of Section One, so I want to focus on his book’s substantial contribution to our understanding of the constitutional politics of Reconstruction while also critiquing Graber’s invocation of Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory to explain the Reconstruction Framers’ motives.

Keywords

Fifteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Reconstruction, Racial Equality, Partisan Politics

Publication Citation

Crum, Travis, Rewarding Loyalty and the Fifteenth Amendment, Balkinization (Jul. 2, 2024), https://balkin.blogspot.com/2024/07/rewarding-loyalty-and-fifteenth.html

Comments

Balkinization Symposium on Mark Graber's:
Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty: The Forgotten Goals of Constitutional Reform after the Civil War

Link

Share

COinS