Absolutely nothing would come of a new CC. There’s no way even those clamoring for a CC could agree on a final draft, let alone get 3/4 of the states to go along.
Sure we could. We’d start with the easy stuff, like gun rights, and then breeze thru the rest!
“I was chosen! for the constitutional convention!” - A. Ham
Mostly seems a way for far-right loudmouths to push for their brand of change, believing the majority of the country secretly agrees with them when history is going the other direction.
I like the cut of your jib! I am now a Believer. Constitutional Conventions for all!
I don’t have any quotes handy, but I gather there was similar apprehension about the last one.
But if so, they’re a completely different kind of nutjobs than the red-state nutjobs. No amendment is going to get to 3/4 without support in both red states and blue, therefore no controversial amendments will pass, therefore what’s the point of a CC?
WILL YOU PEOPLE CUT IT OUT ABOUT THE 3/4 RULE???
Once again, there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that the 3/4 rule would survive a CC!!!
I will say this as plainly as I know how.
Whatever came out of a CC would have its own rules about adoption and how it would go into effect. To go bathering on aimlessly about the 3/4 rule as if it were a scientific law is incredibly stupid, ignorant, and naive; and it is diametrically opposed to the spirit of this board.
The 3/4 rule would be insisted upon by more than 1/4 of the states… If a major set of amendments was passed by a lesser majority, chaos could ensue, leading to a new Civil War.
If the convention is called under the authority of the Constitution, it is bound by the rules of the Constitution.
The 3/4 rule will still apply. It’s still our greatest safeguard.
And look what happened. I stand by my hyperbole! 
Nah, not a Civil War. It’d be a parting of the ways. Then we can see how Mississippi and Alabama like living without blue-state subsidy.
This illustrates the mistaken belief that underlies many of the calls for a convention: the idea that we could write a new constitution but the old constitution would somehow also still be in effect.
Once you start with a constitutional convention, anything is on the table. We could form a hereditary monarchy; we could abolish voting; we could re-establish slavery; we could outlaw Catholicism; we could prohibit the ownership of private property; we could make it a capital offense to make jokes about the government.
This isn’t just writing some new amendments. It’s starting the country over again from scratch.
Exactly. Saying the three quarters rule will somehow transcend a constitutional convention is nonsense. A constitutional convention could declare there are no more states.
Are you referencing a Constitution Convention held under the authority of the Articles of Confederation? If so then these Articles required 100% agreement of all the States, which we obtained to ratify our current Constitution. Our current Constitution only requires 3/4s the States to ratify a proposed amendment and 2/3s just to forward a proposal.
Now if you’re referencing the Second Continental Congress, then of course they made up their own rules, what they were trying to do had never been done before. Plus what they did decide on was agreeable to all the States, all ratified the Articles of Confederation.
If there’s some other Constitutional Convention that occurred that I’m not aware of, perhaps you could share the informing with us. As it stands right now, a proposed amendment becoming a part of the Constitution with less than 3/4s of the States is as likely as a bill failing to pass one of the houses of Congress becoming law. It’s not that it can’t happen, just it never has.
Who has the guns makes the rules.
As Flyer says, if a group of people get together and declare a new constitutional convention, they’re under no obligation to respect the 3/4 rule.
What I think Flyer is forgetting is that the current government, including current military, is also under no obligation to respect the mofos that declared a constitutional convention.
UNLESS, that is, the CC folks decided that they wanted a seamless transition from the old system to the new system. If they wanted that, they might try to change to a new constitution using the rules of the old one, such as, wait for it, the three-fourths rule.
If they just want to party, to create a new constitution, well heck, why wait for 26 states? Come over to my house, bring a case of beer, we’ll draft the hell out of a new constitution tonight!
Who has the guns makes the rules.
That, plus even if 3/4 isn’t legally binding, that’s still about as big a supermajority as you’d need for the rest of the states not to say, “No, fuck you, you’re keeping the old constitution.” We’ve seen what happens when only about 44% of the states decide to write a new constitution, and it doesn’t go well for them.
While I am reluctant to hail our founding fathers as geniuses and to pine for the good old days…I shudder to think what kind of craptastic constitution our modern professional politicians and their associated special interest groups would come up with instead.
Would probably make the National Enquirer look like The New England Journal of Medicine by comparision.
That one had Madison, Washington, and Franklin, among others. Few people thought them nutjobs (other than King George).
What process would replace the old one? You think they’d come out of the CC with tablets of stone and institute them? Just a few states would be enough?
Sure, but it would still have to go through a vote first and states would have to ratify it. Enough states would have to ratify it to override the current constitution. That would take 3/4 of the states. The last time a group of states tried to institute their own constitution without using proper channels it didn’t go over so well.
Any CC is going to have roughly the same effect as the OWS manifestos.
Sure, why not? At the very least we could give them American Samoa as a thank you gift–they’ve been really nice to us, after all.
That’s not accurate–11 states tried what you propose once before, Lincoln demonstrated this theory is false.
Unlikely. Firstly the U.S. Constitution actually said it went into effect for all of the thirteen once 3/4ths had ratified it, even in effect for those states that did not. Luckily there were some individuals like George Washington who really wanted to make sure it had unimpeachable legitimacy and he was a quiet leader in pushing for its universal ratification. Other more firebrand Federalists were heavily at work advocating their cause to get the last few States on board.