General Discussion

The only national constitutional convention ever held — the 1787 assembly in Philadelphia that produced the current Constitution — disregarded its original charge, which was to amend the Articles of Confedera­tion to promote trade among the states. Instead it wrote an entirely new governing document, effectively abolishing the Articles of Confederation and superseding them with a new design of government. A convention held today could set its own agenda, too.

The 1787 convention also completely rewrote the Articles of Confederation’s amendment procedures in a way that made it much easier to secure adoption of the convention’s changes. Under the Articles of Confederation, proposed amend­ments had to be approved by Congress and then ratified by all 13 states to take effect. Rhode Island, which opposed the kinds of changes that the 1787 convention was called to propose, declined to send delegates to the convention, apparently confident that the requirement for unanimous state approval meant it could block any resulting proposals that harmed its interests.

Instead, the other states’ dele­gates bypassed Rhode Island and created a new ratification process that made the new Constitution effective with the consent of only nine states and cut Congress out of the amendment process entirely. Rhode Island opposed the new Constitution and resisted ratifying for several years. Eventually, however, left only with the choice of seceding or going along, it was forced to succumb. The current three-quarters requirement was imposed only for later constitutional amendments.

and from a recent article last month:
But like many provisions in the Constitution, Article V leaves much open to interpretation: Nothing in its 143 words describes the process by which a convention would be run or the delegates who would meet and vote on potential amendments. The founding document’s requirement that any new amendments be ratified by three-quarters of states was a requirement the last constitutional convention ignored.


“Congress can purport to make whatever rules it wants for the convention. The convention can then throw them in the trash, which is certainly what the convention in Philadelphia did in 1787,” said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law. “There’s no guarantee that they will follow the ratification procedures. The only precedent we do have, they didn’t follow the ratification procedures.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/584835-conservatives-prepare-new-push-for-constitutional-convention