Law Commons^™

Rejecting Conventional Wisdom: Federalist Ambivalence In The Framing And Implementation Of Article V, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

In 1787, the idea of placing an amending provision in a constitution was uncontroversial. Popular sovereignty was an assumed doctrine in the colonies; the people retained the unalienable right "to alter or abolish" their system of government whenever they so pleased. How this unquestionable right was to be incorporated into the new federal Constitution, however, was another matter. The delegates who faced each other at Philadelphia had very different views about which body should be entrusted with the power to propose amendments, when that power should be used, and how that power should be defined.

Article V, like the rest …