And not only the politicians, but every lobbyist and lawyer and judge in the land would want a crack at changing things to their vision of a better Constitution.
A Constitutional Convention is basically opening up one heck of a can of worms. Because remember, a Constitutional Convention gets full power to try and rewrite almost ANYTHING.
I think the fundamental problem with "a new Constitutional Convention" is that there's no way to keep it from being staffed by the current folk. And even if we can go around Congress, what's to stop the corporations from buying off the state legislatures? It would take a majority in one house each in 13 states to block any amendment, which isn't that much when you realize state campaigns are loads cheaper.
And any sort of convention would have to entertain "take away guns" amendments from the left and "ban abortions" amendments from the right. They'd spend so much more time fighting about those things than on the stuff like reducing corporate power or making the Congress suck less.
I agree about a constitutional convention ... trouble is, that sword cuts both ways. It's a great opportunity for those you agree with to get major changes through ... but it's a great opportunity for those you disagree with.
Uh, a gathering that sends proposed amendments to state legislatures is a Constitutional convention. (And the first Constitutional convention was gathered to do just that for the Articles of Confederation, it just ended up sending back a recommendation to trash the whole thing and start over. The concern that one called to do draft amendments for the Constitution might do likewise has always been one of the reasons people fear calling one, and have generally preferred running specific amendments through the Congress even when its difficult to calling a convention with direction to address a particular concern.)
Here's what puzzles me a bit- if you believe legislation and legislators are up for sale to the highest bidder...then why do believe a constitutional convention would not be the same, with much more serious consequences?
I think it's incredibly dangerous to imagine that a con-con would not be the target of truly massive amounts of influence peddling. And you can't limit the scope of a con-con either, so EVERYTHING is up for grabs.
What would be the objective of the convention? "Let's update the Constitution to fix all thing things" sounds nice and all, but are there specific changes we want that "both sides" would be happy with?
There is also a convention of the states that can change the constitution. It has been talked about by various groups from time to time, but has never happened.
I personally think this is a great idea as a Constitutional Convention will be a free-for-all with no rules. We can then start from scratch on U.S. Constitution 2.0.
With a new codebase, we can do a total rewrite, getting rid of bad lines, and not having to have that explicit patch for slavery to be included during every recompile. We can also clean up some dumb redundant code like the 18th and 21st Amendments. Should have been done years ago.
And given we're a democracy, we should all vote yes/no for the new Constitution. I know where the majority of the people in this country stand on the issues (81 million to 74 million during the last presidential election) so I'm fine with this.
It would take a very-well-thought out Constitutional amendment through a State-powered Constitutional Convention (since Congress isn't going to trim its own wings) at a minimum, I fear. Any one of "very-well-thought out", "Constitutional amendment", and "Constitutional Convention" seems pretty unlikely anytime soon; the combination of all even more so. Still, these are crazy times politically, who knows?
Constitutional amendments are dangerous. The whole constitution is at risk of change during a constitutional convention. We are at risk of losing much more than we gain
Just to be pedantic: constitutional amendments, in the USA, require a maximum of 75% of the states to agree. Minimally 66.6% (repeating, of course) of them to call a constitutional convention, and ratify the results.
None of that challenges your important points about the intentions of the founders, nor the difficulties upon which their project has run around.
There is a movement for a constitutional convention via state conventions floating around. I had a lot of trouble figuring out their agenda though.
Given that Citizens United is a thing and that Bob Menendez somehow wasn't convicted in a pretty cut-and-dry bribery case, I don't think I want a constitutional amendment any time soon.
A Constitutional Convention is basically opening up one heck of a can of worms. Because remember, a Constitutional Convention gets full power to try and rewrite almost ANYTHING.
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