Joey Fishkin has posted this draft on SSRN (Yale L.J. Online).  Here is the abstract:

The plaintiffs in Shelby County v. Holder argue that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act should be struck down because it offends the “equal dignity” of the covered states — an argument the Court appeared to credit in its last brush with section 5 in NAMUDNO. This Essay, written in advance of the decision in Shelby County, critically examines this equal dignity of the states argument and situates it in a larger context. Americans have been fighting for 150 years, since the Civil War and Reconstruction, about the structural implications of the events of 1861–70 for the sovereignty, dignity, and equality of the states — and of the Southern states in particular. The equal dignity of the states argument thus stakes a claim on the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction in American historical memory, a claim whose implications are problematic and profound,