A Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, also called an Article V Convention, or Amendments Convention, is one of two alternative procedures for proposing amendments to the United States Constitution described in Article Five of the Constitution. The other method is a vote by two-thirds of each house of Congress. While the possibility of such a convention happening in the twenty-first century seems remote, in recent years there has been a small but influential group of constitutional scholars insisting that state governments call for such a convention. They include Lawrence Lessig, Sanford Levinson, Larry Sabato, and Jonathan Turley among others, and there are reports that such a proposal is gaining "traction."
According to Article V, Congress must call for an amendment-proposing convention, “on the application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States”, and therefore 34 state legislatures would have to submit applications. Once an Article V convention has proposed amendments, then each of those amendments would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states (i.e. 38 states) in order to become part of the Constitution.
Congress has the power to choose between two methods of ratification: ratification by the state legislatures, or instead ratification by state conventions called for that purpose. In contrast to those separate state ratification conventions, a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution would be a single federal convention. While there have been calls for a second federal convention based on a single issue such as the Balanced Budget Amendment, it is not clear whether a convention summoned in this way would be legally bound to limit discussion to a single issue; law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen has suggested that such a convention would have the "power to propose anything it sees fit". All 27 amendments to the Constitution have happened in a procedural sense by going through Congress and not through proposal by state legislatures.
Read more about Convention To Propose Amendments To The United States Constitution: History, Permissible Scope of Applications To Congress, Permissible Scope of Proposed Amendments, Ability of States To Rescind Applications To Congress, Supreme Court Interpretations of Article V
Famous quotes containing the words convention, propose, amendments, united, states and/or constitution:
“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I think those Southern writers [William Faulkner, Carson McCullers] have analyzed very carefully the buildup in the South of a special consciousness brought about by the self- condemnation resulting from slavery, the humiliation following the War Between the States and the hope, sometimes expressed timidly, for redemption.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)