Very few people know that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 only the last of nearly 20 other conventions in which American colonies, and later states, met to deliberate on specified problems.
In these gatherings, states met as semi-sovereigns; these were essentially diplomatic meetings. The rule for decision was “one state, one vote.”
Those conventions were the model [...]
Sometimes a convention for proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution is referred to as a “constitutional convention.” That title is both wrong and fatally misleading.
The correct name—given by the Constitution itself—is convention for proposing amendments. Other accurate names are amendments convention, Article V convention, or convention of the states. In the Founding Era and during [...]
The Constitution was created in a special legal environment. The Founders were raised with a particular educational canon. They also had certain common experiences. During the 19th century, important details about those matters began to slip away. Constitutional law forgot them.
In other words, information crucial to understanding 18th century words was lost during the 19th century. [...]
The U.S. Constitution authorizes a “convention for proposing amendments” to offer amendments for ratification (or rejection) by the states.
The mechanism has never been used (all amendments have come from Congress), and many people have been curious about how it is supposed to work. But that’s because they are unaware of the long series of interstate [...]
Common sense tells us that an out-of-control Congress is not going to rein in its own power. The American Founders predicted this might become the case, so they provided a way by which the state legislatures could propose and ratify corrective constitutional amendments without Congress being able to stop them.
This is the “state-application-and-convention” procedure of [...]
As I predicted in this column, Congress’s continued inability to deal effectively with the debt crisis is AGAIN provoking interest in bypassing Congress with one or more corrective constitutional amendments. We could do this if the state legislatures use their constitutional power to bring about what the Constitution calls a “convention for proposing amendments.”
I’m delighted [...]
The latest debt deal illustrates Congress’s utter inability to deal with the mess it has gotten itself into. As more and more Americans realize this, pressure will build for an interstate “convention for proposing amendments” to solve the problem. (The Constitution authorizes the state legislatures to force an interstate convention for [...]
There is growing sentiment that one or more constitutional amendments may be necessary to rein in the runaway Congress.
The principal mechanism the Founders built into the Constitution for such contingencies is the procedure in Article V by which two thirds of the state legislatures force what the Constitution calls a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” Essentially [...]
In recent months, there has been interest in states forming compacts with each other to opt out of ObamaCare or other federal programs. The idea is that because such compacts have the effect of federal law, they will supersede earlier federal laws (such as ObamaCare).
The strategy is apparently being driven by one or more enthusiastic [...]
“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished most religiously to preserve.”
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in 2 Select Works of Edmund Burke 108 (Liberty [...]
