[Publius]

First off, the 21st Amendment was proposed by the usual mechanism. Two-thirds of the House and Senate passed it and sent it on to the states for ratification. There was not an Amendments Convention on the topic.

However, Congress, as part of its Disposal power, sent it to state ratifying conventions, not state legislatures, for ratification. Each state held a special election to fill a state ratifying convention based on the makeup of its most numerous, i.e. lower, house.

A state ratifying convention is different from an Amendments Convention involving all the states.

[elcid1970]

Thanks for the clarification. I must have been thinking of a state ratifying convention in each state; but this does bypass to an extent the entrenched powers in the state legislatures.

Would an Amendments Convention be of the same magnitude as a Constituent Assembly? Well...one proposes amendments & the latter meets to create a new constitution.

It was the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1918 that was dissolved by the Bolsheviks, touching off civil war & 70 years of communist rule.