INSIDER – Republicans have campaigned behind the scenes for years now to change the Constitution through a gathering of 34 state legislatures known as a constitutional convention.
A constitutional convention, designated by Article V of the Constitution, would allow state legislatures to pass or ratify constitutional amendments without a governor’s signature, Congress’ intervention, or any input from the president.
Some Republicans attempt to use a convention, which has never been accomplished in U.S. history, to limit the federal governments spending and taxation powers and enact term limits on more federal officials.
Former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold and constitutional scholar Peter Prindiville write in their new book “The Constitution in Jeopardy” that a “runaway” convention has the potential to go off-script and create massive changes in how the federal government regulates laws concerning health care, education, and the environment.
Prindiville told the Times that the convention would operate as a “free-standing, distinct constitutional body” without clear guidance on how it would function because the rules of a constitutional convention were never detailed by the framers.
“The Convention of the States, which has ties to prominent Republicans like former Trump lawyer John Eastman, has pushed for narrow revisions of the Constitution that would limit ‘the power and jurisdiction’ of the federal government.”
“Despite convention proponents’ claims of legal certainty, the most important questions about how a convening held under Article V would be called and how it would function are unsettled,” Feingold and Prindiville write in their book, according to the Times.
“The framers left no rules. In this uncertainty lies great danger and, possibly, great power.”
Insider’s Grace Panetta and Brent D. Griffiths previously reported on the Republican plan to assemble a constitutional convention to gut environmental regulations and education standards while making it more difficult for Washington, DC or territories like Puerto Rico to earn statehood.
Rob Natelson, a key Article V scholar in the movement to call a convention, previously dismissed the potential of a “runaway” convention to Insider … READ MORE.
