Treatise on Amendments Conventions Updated to Include Rules for Congress’s “Call”
Some people claim the rules pertaining to the Constitution’s “Convention for Proposing Amendments” are largely unknown, but there actually is quite a lot of law on the subject. Earlier this year, I pulled together that body of law in a legal treatise entitled “State Initiation of Constitutional Amendments: A Guide for Lawyers and Legislative Drafters.” […]
The Washington Post Picks Up the Flag from the Convention Alarmists
The past week saw yet another assault on those reformers who seek to cure federal dysfunction by promoting a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” The latest attack took the form of an opinion column that in content offered nothing new. It featured many of the usual errors of commission and omission: The author confused a “Convention […]
No, the Necessary and Proper Clause Does NOT Empower Congress to Control an Amendments Convention
A few days ago I heard a presentation by a spokesman for a group that claims to defend the Constitution and revere the Founders. Yet the spokesman trashed the Constitution’s framers for allegedly exceeding their authority and claimed they added a provision that largely rendered another provision useless. In other words, the spokesman charged the […]
Failure to Call Amendments Conventions Helps Explain Modern Federal Overreaching
This Article is a modified version of one appearing in the American Thinker. If President after President failed to veto bills, would it surprise you if congressional power grew at the expense of the presidency? If the Senate never blocked the President’s appointments, would it surprise you if presidential power expanded at the expense of […]
Momentum for an Amendments Convention Accelerates Even More
Well over a hundred state lawmakers from 33 states met this past week to plan for an Article V “Convention for Proposing Amendments.” Most attendees had been appointed officially as delegates by the leaders of their respective state legislatures. The highly successful meeting dealt with such issues as convention rules and procedures, how to involve […]
Momentum for Amendments Convention Accelerates
It increasingly looks like a “convention for proposing amendments” is really going to happen. The last 18 months have witnessed a flood of new state legislative applications for such a convention. New Hampshire re-booted the process in 2012 with an application for a convention limited to considering a balanced budget amendment. Late last year, the […]
A Legal Treatise on the Law of Amendment Conventions—For Free!
A spate of new applications from state legislatures for a “convention for proposing amendments” make it more likely that we will have an amendments convention in the near future. In order to get ready for this historic event, lawyers, legislators, and others involved in the process need a reliable guide to the law governing amendment […]
How Do We Know an Article V Amendments Convention is a “Convention of the States?” Because Both the Founders and the Supreme Court Said So
Article V of the Constitution authorizes a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” However, it does did not specify how the convention is to be composed. People unfamiliar with constitutional history sometimes claim the makeup of an amendments convention is either a complete mystery or subject to the determination of Congress. Nonsense. For one thing, the Supreme […]
The Lamp of Experience: Constitutional Amendments Work
(This article originally appeared in the American Thinker.) Opponents of a Convention of States long argued that there was an unacceptable risk a convention might do too much. It now appears they were mistaken. So they increasingly argue that amendments cannot do enough. The “too much” contention was first promulgated in modern times by apologists […]
A Modern Quasi-Convention of States
Many opponents of an Article V convention seem to think that it would be a nearly unique event, for which the “only precedent” would be the 1787 constitutional convention. Some even go so far as to oppose non-Article V gatherings among the states. As regular readers know, the idea that a convention of states would […]
Struggling With Nullification
Does a state have the right to nullify federal statutes the state considers unconstitutional? This depends largely on how you define “nullification.” It also depends on what you mean by “right” and what kind of document you understand the Constitution to be. In other words, it depends on your premises. Unfortunately, people often discuss—and debate, […]
The Santa Fe Convention: A 20th Century Convention of States
For over 300 years, American states (and before Independence, American colonies) have cooperated with each other as equal sovereigns to address common problems. One device for doing so is the formal, diplomatic meeting of state delegations (called “committees”) consisting of delegates (called “commissioners”). Meetings of state commissioners may be bilateral—as when two states form a […]
