Should a New Constitutional Convention Be Called to Fix the Constitution?
When the Founders framed the Constitution, they were humble enough to acknowledge that the document might require changes from time to time, to accommodate changing circumstances. Accordingly, they provided, in Article V, two ways by which the Constitution could be modified. The first, by amendment, required two-thirds of each of the two houses of Congress to propose, and three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify, a difficult process that has delivered 27 amendments over the Constitution’s nearly 230-year history. The second, by convening a new constitutional convention, requires the “application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states,” and has never taken place. Both methods were deliberately made difficult by the Founders, for a very important reason: The Constitution, as the “fundamental law” intended to restrain the government, should not be something the government itself can alter at whim.
As a result of the difficulties inherent in changing the Constitution, dozens of amendments proposed over the years have failed to meet the rigorous standards for ratification. There is now a growing movement in favor of convening a new constitutional convention, with a view to correcting en masse a host of alleged deficiencies in the document as it stands. It is touted as a one-time fix to seemingly intractable problems ranging from the right to life to term limits. A constitutional convention is clearly both legal and constitutional. But is it wise?
Consider the makeup of our two existing legislatures. Since the inauguration of President Trump and the swearing in of the latest bicameral GOP majority in Congress, we have waited in vain for the long-promised repeal of blatantly unconstitutional measures such as ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. Tax cuts may prove politically feasible, but corresponding cuts in unconstitutional Big Government certainly will not. The only significant attempts to rein in Big Government have come from the president himself, who has exercised his very limited authority to reverse certain Obama-era executive usurpations. But the president’s stated desire to “drain the swamp” obviously has few supporters, in either party, on Capitol Hill.
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