Article V Opponents and the Question of Sovereignty Part V

Article V Blog ^ | March 17th 2017 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

In earlier posts we learned the legal and political sovereign over colonial America was the King-in-Parliament. After independence, both sovereignties relocated to the new state legislatures. From Part IV, the Constitution put the Declaration’s recognition of legal sovereignty in the people into practice.

Peaceful Revolution. Man is incapable of creating a perfect institution, suitable for all times. Through Article V, the decay and eventual death that typifies republics was no longer inevitable. The Constitution never pretended to perfection or to the exclusion of future improvements. On the contrary, the healing principle in Article V enables the legal sovereign to return the republic to first principles periodically and peacefully. When government is found defective, Americans need not resort to revolution. No, the legal sovereign will assemble as per Article V, and amend its institutions to secure national happiness.

As Pennsylvania’s James Wilson summarized, “Americans had in fact institutionalized and legitimized revolution.” The endless cycles of history could be broken. Americans could diagnose the ills of society and work out peaceful cures. Our Framers discovered a constitutional antidote wholly popular and strictly republican for the ancient diseases of republics.

Special Amending Bodies. Conceptually, the people are the fount of supreme authority, but without Article V, violent revolution would remain the method, the bloody route to establishing legal sovereignty. Article V sets out the orderly process to form a temporary amending body. This amending body, on behalf of the people, is the legal sovereign. Depending on the source of proposed amendments (congress or the states), and the ratifying method (determined by congress), the congress, state legislatures, a convention of states, and special state ratifying conventions may all be elements of the Article V amending body.