Article 5 Convention Of States

Chomsky: It still takes 38 states to ratify an amendment.

Captain Adverse said:

Be careful what you wish for.

An Article Five convention is an open door to rewriting the entire Constitution, not a method for pushing a single amendment.

Once empaneled you could have States like California able to convince other large States with similar views amongst their populace to push for changes in free speech, second amendment rights, and religious freedom.

On the other hand States with a conservative lean might go for "defense of marriage" and other kinds of "protections" which may sound good to extremists...but IMO infringe on individual liberty just as much as Left-wing efforts to curb free speech and self-defense rights.

As for your comment about why people don't know much about it? I believe the only prior time our nation saw such a convention was at the original Founding when the Bill of Rights was constructed.

That is typically covered in American History classes in 11th or 12th grade. But while some States and localities require civics classes, many don't, so the only time kids learn of it is briefly in such American History classes.

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You've missed, however that whatever amendments this national convention (article 5 convention) proposes, still have to be submitted to the States, and 3/4 of the states must concur with the amendments the convention proposed.

zyzygy said:

1.) Why don't people seem to know of Article 5 Convention Of States of the Constitution , 10 states have already joined----
2.) -call your senators and representatives to support it-----it was written in by the framers as a last resort for the states when their power is being usurped by a lawless and too far overreach by the federal government.

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1.) i think plenty of people are fully aware of it. it was taught in my schools at least and taught to my daughter.
2.) as for "me" supporting it and doing it right now? good god why? what is going on that justifies it right now? I see no reason to do so. You know its not a single issue maneuver right? in todays nutter climate i would never support it.

I have read articles about the national conventions before. Apparently, Congress has pretty much lost track of who has requested one, because some states have requested one with instructions for one or more specific amendments, and others have requested it and withdrawn the request. It would have been better if Article V bestowed the authority to keep track of the petitions to the Supreme Court or something.

The problem with the Convention of States organization is they are pretending instead of doing what it is they want to do.

Mark Meckler, and the rest of the principle organizers, should gather the delegates themselves and generate the corrective amendments, and then present the amendment solution to the state legislatures. The state legislature will then be inclined to reappoint the delegates to do the official Article V convention to validate the amendment system and re-send it to the states for ratification.

Think about. Imagine how difficult it will be for the states to figure out who is capable of participating in the convention. It is not an easy task, you are going to need people who know how to write directive systems, and want to do it - how are state legislatures going to discriminate such qualifications?

And then, the states have to coordinate with each other to set the date for a conventions.

The Article V. was written for a bygone era of communications - we can do all this stuff on the Internet, now.

The Article V, was written in such a manner, that if anybody could do it, then essentially they have generated the successor to the subsisting federal government - that is the big thing that CoS does not understand. If CoS could just figure out the entire rules for gather delegates and then generating and validating legislative directives, then you have accomplished the task of generating a better government.

To call for an Article 5 convention (Constitution Convention) could be very dangerous in today's climate, look what happened to the Articles of Confederation when the convention of 1787 was called, it scrapped the Articles and created a whole new government. There is nothing preventing the same to happen to the current Constitution if a Constitutional Convention is called.

We need a new constitution - we need a better organization of the checks and balances. The entire three level system needs to be formatted.

Yeah, the Constitutional Convention you describe generated a new charter, but it did not happen without a state by state ratification process, and how long did that take - two years???

And the end result is that people still consider the document to be the greatest thing ever written, and they have no qualms about the legend of how the convention was redirected.

The problem is, as I described, nobody knows how to organize the convention.