Summary:
- In 2024, North Carolina lawmakers passed a resolution calling for an Article V constitutional convention
- Advocates of a convention to rewrite the constitution include conservative and libertarian special interests
- An Article V convention would massively destabilize America’s basic constitutional order
At the very end of 2024, Republicans in the General Assembly shepherded through a Joint Resolution calling for an Article V constitutional convention. North Carolina thus became the 20th state to pass such a request for a convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. House Joint Resolution 151 called upon Congress “call a convention limited to proposing an amendment” in favor of Congressional term limits.
This “convention of states” resolution did not appear spontaneously, and despite its language, harbors much larger goals than just term limits for Congress. In fact, the call for a constitutional convention was the product of years of quiet but insistent lobbying by a group of extremely conservative interest groups, known as the “Convention of States” movement, with an eye towards fundamentally reshaping the government of the United States as we know it. These actors have conducted a highly misleading public campaign that seeks to plunge the United States into a chaotic and destabilizing constitutional crisis.
An Article V Convention
Article V of the U.S. Constitution addresses the process for making amendments. For any Constitutional amendment to pass, it must to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. But the Constitution provides two ways for an amendment to be proposed: either it can be passed by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress, or two-thirds of state legislatures can call on Congress to convene a “convention for proposing amendments.” The Constitution gives no guidance or procedure whatsoever for how such a convention would be organized or conducted.
All existing 27 Amendments to the Constitution have been proposed through the congressional method, and no constitutional convention has ever been called in the history of the United States – though there have been applications for Article V conventions in the past. Notably, in the late 1960s, 32 states (just 2 short of the required 34) called for a convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s landmark Reynolds v. Sims decision, which mandated the “one man, one vote” principle for state legislatures. (North Carolina was among those in opposition.)
For proponents, an Article V convention represents a method to pass constitutional changes by circumventing Congress. But there are very significant risks to this strategy. The biggest is that there is no way to contain or limit the scope of changes for a constitutional convention once called – a fact that many of its proponents are counting on.
The current push for a Convention
The campaign for an Article V constitutional convention is spearheaded by two competing right-wing organizations: Convention of States and U.S. Term Limits. While nominally nonpartisan, the people behind these organizations almost all have extremely conservative or libertarian backgrounds.
U.S. Term Limits is the smaller organization of the two, with a board consisting primarily of businessmen and conservative and libertarian political activists. Convention of the States, by contrast, has been targeting North Carolina for years, with its trademark llama dressed in red, white, and blue. The group’s President, Mark Meckler, co-founded the Republican special interest group “Tea Party Patriots.” Its chairman and senior advisers are a smattering of the far right fringe of the Republican party: from Eric O’Keefe (dubbed “the third Koch Brother”) to former GOP senators Rick Santorum and Jim DeMint. Its endorsements page features the president of the Heritage Foundation, Ron Desantis, Mark Meadows, Vivek Ramaswamy, Sean Hannity, Greg Abbott, Rand Paul, Ben Shapiro, Mark Robinson, Charlie Kirk, Chip Roy, and Sarah Palin.
COS loudly advocates for a convention that would go far beyond instituting term limits. In two real-world simulations of a potential convention the group ran in 2016 and 2023, its activists proposed amendments ranging from allowing states to nullify federal law, ending the Equal Protection Clause, dismantling much of the federal government and preventing Congress from delegating “any rule making function related to commerce among the states to any executive official or agency.”
Dangers of a Convention
Though the campaign for an Article V convention has publicly focused on term limits, the leaders of the pressure groups behind it have consistently advocated using the process to realize a far-reaching ulterior agenda. Campaigners hope to exploit a “runaway convention,” where a convention convened ostensibly to address one issue (like term limits) veers off into other topics that voters more than likely oppose.
While proponents of Article V argue vehemently that a limited convention is possible and would result from their proposed legislation, they are plainly either wrong, or worse, attempting to mislead. The entire legal basis for a constitutional convention is the 20 words in Article V. As David Super put it in his American Constitution Society brief on article V conventions: “The danger of a runaway [convention] springs from the absence of any legal authority requiring that a convention must limit itself.” Proponents’ arguments essentially amount to: “just trust us.” That’s a tall order, particularly when their group leaders are so active in advocating for extremist right-wing politics.
In 2016, the Congressional Research Service identified “a range of policy questions Congress might face if an Article V Convention seemed imminent.” The list included questions over the legitimacy of state applications, Congressional discretion in calling a convention, how delegates would be credentialed (or even if they could be), could congress refuse to propose amendments, the role of the President, the role of Congress in determining convention mechanics, among others. Absolutely none of this is settled.
A constitutional convention is highly unlikely to ever actually happen. A minimum of 34 states would need to call for one to trigger a convention, and conservative activists simply do not have sufficient influence in enough legislatures. Nevertheless, even 20 states signaling support for such a massively destabilizing event is concerning; particularly on behalf of states, like North Carolina, whose pervasive gerrymandering has rendered their legislatures mostly untethered from the will of its voters.
