Obviously, Congress has no interest in facilitating any proposal that would undercut what it views as its own institutional interests. We can expect that there will be immense resistance from that quarter, that a Convention of the States proposing amendments to the Constitution can be expected to face an uphill battle.
FWIW, I think Bill Walker was right, that there should be no time limit, for the purposes of "aggregation," for State Applications.
Thanks again, Publius!
The very limited role in the convention process allotted to congress by the framers of the constitution arose from their experience. An extra-congressional process would provide a safeguard against an abusive or recalcitrant national legislature. Debate records from the federal and state ratifying conventions make it plain that Article V is designed in part for the states to circumvent congress.
It is outright absurd to say the framers intended to entrust congress with authority over the very institution created specifically to bypass it! As Alexander Hamilton succinctly stated, “the words of this article are peremptory. The congress shall call a convention. There is no discretion.
The structure of the federal government created by the constitution also supports the view that congress’ role in the amendment process is severely limited. The convention process is created by Article V; it is not a component of any of the three branches of government created by the first three articles. The convention derives its power from a separate and independent grant of authority in the constitution itself. It cannot be made subservient to any branch of the government. Further, the sole purpose of the convention is to propose changes in the pre-existing system of government. This renders the convention distinct from, if not superior to, the three branches of government.
Whatever the application counting role of congress, congress has neither the power to limit the subject matter of a convention for proposing amendments, nor the right to limit the convention to a narrow issue. The federal convention specifically deleted reference to a single amendment on a single issue. This deliberate change is reflected in Article V and must be given substance. Congress/courts have no authority to alter or limit that power.
Nor does the plain language of Article V empower congress/courts to limit the form of state applications by topic or time limit. The whole reason for the convention method was to give the states the ability to circumvent a recalcitrant or unresponsive congress. Any construction of Article V that gives congress the ability to limit or defeat the application process is plainly incorrect. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the history of Article V is that congress has no authority to involve itself in any way in the operation of a convention for proposing amendments once it has been called.
Matters such as where the convention will meet, who shall chair it, how voting by delegates will be conducted, and what matters the convention will consider are all beyond the authority of congress.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 85, once congress has called a convention it has no further role until the convention has finished its work and proposed one or more amendments.
I suggest printing off both the ALEC Document by Natelson that was in my link and also the ABA Report that was my second link. Both documents should be three-hole punched and placed in a binder. There will come a time when people and politicians will be quoting chapter and verse from both documents.
The two documents have very different, competing and mutually exclusive views of how an Amendments Convention would be run and how delegates would be chosen. In reading the two documents, you could build a matrix of the differences between them.
Natelson did not take the ABA Report into his research, and I say this because there is no mention of it in his endnotes. It's understandable because the ABA Report is not available on the Net. Bill Walker got it in hard copy from the ABA, laboriously keyed it into his brief, and I had it only because of the editing work I did for Walker. Natelson probably doesn't know it exists. It exists on FR only because I saved it from my effort with Bill.
The key to the differences lies in who is the controlling authority for an Amendments Convention. ALEC says it's the states, as does Mark Levin and the entire COS movement. The ABA says it's Congress.
When Congress calls an Amendments Convention, 535 copies of the ABA Report will come out of dusty filing cabinets in a warehouse that looks like the one where the government stored the Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Various congressmen and senators will introduce bills giving Congress control over who will be the delegates to the convention and how the convention will operate. The states will fight back. This will be the battle, not whether Congress will actually call a convention or not.