he following amendment would resolve several critical issues concerning the amending process: Can a state legislature rescind its previous ratification of a constitutional amendment? Can it withdraw any of its applications for a convention of the states? Does Congress have power to control when, where, and how that convention is held? or do the legislatures have such power?

Neither Congress nor any court has ever settled these matters definitively. So, before embarking down the unprecedented path of proposing amendments, it clearly would be best if we could first persuade Congress to propose such an amendment in the normal fashion and our state legislatures to promptly ratify it. To boost that effort, legislatures could make their application to Congress for the call of a convention for proposing it. The more legislatures making that application, the greater the incentive Congress has to propose this amendment to all of them itself.*

Although each of the present 27 amendments has added at least one new word to the Constitution's vocabulary, the above amendment wouldn't. Since it would be amending the provisions of Article V of the Constitution, that seems most appropriate and prudent. No need to give any branch of the federal government an untoward opportunity to mindlessly promulgate novel definitions for enhancing its already extravagant powers.

One issue left unresolved is whether Congress can simply tack onto its introductory clause any conditions not specifically provided for in the Constitution, such as no amendment it proposes will be valid unless ratified "within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress." When such is included in the amendment's actual text, there is no ambiguity. But this should be a plain enough matter over which good sense and judgment again prevails.

Another is whether Congress should have power to summarily cancel the ratification process — to, in effect, "un-propose" a submitted amendment — either before a sufficient number of state legislatures have ratified it or retroactively by declaring its adoption isn't permitted because, for example, it wasn't done "within a reasonable time." The courts have sense enough not to touch this. If any members of Congress voting in favor of granting themselves such power are also stupefyingly unaware they've just committed certain electoral suicide, why would anyone wish to waste time trying to enlighten them?

In any event, such an amendment's provisions should help resolve the most critical of these unsettled issues.

Labels: Article V Convention for proposing Amendments, Power to the people

	8:17 PM

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