The Constitutional Convention and Constitutional Change: A Revisionist History (original) (raw)
How do we change the Federal Constitution? Article V tells us that we can amend the Constitution by calling a national convention to propose changes and then ratifying those proposals in state conventions. Conventions play this role because they represent the people in their sovereign capacity, as we learn when we read McCulloch v. Maryland. What is not often discussed is that Article V itself contains another mechanism for constitutional change. In fact, Article V permits both conventions and leg- islatures to be used for amendment, and, as it happens, all but one of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been made by legislatures. If conventions alone represent the people in their sovereign capacity, then why don’t we actu- ally use them to change the Federal Constitution? Are we to conclude that most of the amendments are in some way defective? To show why Article V might have permitted the use of legislatures to amend the Constitution, this Article examines a series of polit...
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.