Convention of States Misleads Conservatives

The campaign for a new constitutional convention masquerades under the misleading slogan Convention of States. This falsely implies that states can exert some measure of control over the agenda, rules, or apportionment of a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. In fact, all such powers are reserved to Congress or to the convention itself.

The Constitution says that only Congress may “call” a constitutional convention, so it wouldn’t be a “convention of states” but rather would be convened (called) under the direction of power-brokers in Washington, D.C. Congress or the Supreme Court would require the convention to be apportioned by population, which means big liberal states like California and New York would have greater power than most conservative states.

Rex Lee, the legendary Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, wrote that there’s no way to limit the scope of a constitutional convention to the single issue or issues stipulated by those who advocate it. Anyone who guarantees such a limited convention, Rex Lee added, “is either deluded or deluding.”

Former Chief Justice Warren Burger also warned against the false hope that an Article V convention can be limited. “The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda,” Burger wrote. “After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like its agenda.”

A Democratic state senator in Utah who voted against the measure said that “When you begin replacing Madison and Jefferson and Hamilton ... you’re going to need a lot of help.”

As Phyllis Schlafly once remarked, “Alas, I don’t see any George Washingtons, James Madisons, Ben Franklins, or Alexander Hamiltons around who could do as good a job as the Founding Fathers — and I’m worried about the men who think they can.” She is credited with defeating the push for a constitutional convention in the 1980s, and she considered those efforts to be as important as defeating the Equal Rights Amendment a decade earlier.

The original Constitutional Convention of 1787 had three essential conditions: complete secrecy from the media, participants who fought in the American Revolution against tyranny, and George Washington presiding. None of those necessary conditions exist today.