Habitual offender laws operate to increase the sentence of an individual if that person already has a felony conviction. At the same time, many people with felony convictions cannot vote or run for office due to felony disenfranchisement laws. Thus, habitual offender laws target a formally disenfranchised group—people with felony convictions. That creates an archetypal political process problem. As John Hart Ely argued, laws that target a formally disenfranchised group are tainted and deserve heightened constitutional scrutiny. When reviewing habitual offender laws under the Eighth Amendment, however, courts have applied the opposite of heightened scrutiny—they have applied an extreme form of deference for decades. This phenomenon of deference despite disenfranchisement creates a cruel democratic purgatory. It is the institutional equivalent of disenfranchising people with pre-existing health conditions, passing a health insurance law that excludes them, and then declining to hear their constitutional challenges out of deference to the democratic process. Or disenfranchising women, criminalizing abortion, and shutting the courthouse door. This Article describes this dysfunctional dynamic and offers a solution: if a court is reviewing a habitual offender law from a state with felony disenfranchisement, it should apply heightened scrutiny, not deference.

如果某人已经被判重罪，则惯犯法会加重该人的刑期。同时，由于重罪剥夺公民权法，许多有重罪定罪的人不能投票或竞选公职。因此，惯犯法针对的是正式被剥夺权利的群体——有重罪前科的人。这就产生了一个典型的政治过程问题。正如约翰·哈特·伊利 (John Hart Ely) 所说，针对正式被剥夺权利的群体的法律受到污染，值得加强宪法审查。然而，在根据第八修正案审查惯犯法时，法院采用了与加强审查相反的方式——几十年来他们采用了一种极端的尊重形式。尽管剥夺了公民权，但这种尊重的现象造成了残酷的民主炼狱。这在制度上等同于剥夺已有健康状况的人的权利，通过一项将他们排除在外的健康保险法，然后出于对民主进程的尊重而拒绝听取他们对宪法的挑战。或者剥夺妇女的权利，将堕胎定为犯罪，并关闭法院的大门。本文描述了这种功能失调的动态并提供了一个解决方案：如果法院正在审查来自重罪剥夺公民权的州的惯犯法，它应该加强审查，而不是尊重。