" --- If your Honors shall find a way to declare this so-called Amendment to the Federal Constitution valid, then the Government of the United States as it has been known to us and to our forefathers will have ceased to exist.
Your Honors will have discovered a new legislative authority hitherto unknown to the Constitution and quite untrammeled by any of its limitations.
You will have declared that two thirds of a quorum of each House of the Congress, plus a majority of a quorum of each of the two Houses of the Legislatures of three fourths of the States, may enact any legislation they please without any reference to the limitations of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights itself. -- "
I think I have a refutation here. According to your post, Root argued: "You will have declared that two thirds of a quorum of each House of the Congress, plus a majority of a quorum of each of the two Houses of the Legislatures of three fourths of the States, may enact any legislation they please without any reference to the limitations of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights itself." That tracks the language of Article V of the U.S. Const.: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States," with the exception of the word "quorum."
I assume Root was, therefor, arguing that a quorum was insufficient to the purpose. Was it?
If a two-thirds of a quorum was all that was necessary to ratify the first ten amendments, there seems little justification for claiming more would be needed for the eighteenth.
Quorums are not the point.
Root 'boldly' argued that alcohol prohibition is an unconstitutional infringement on our basic individual rights. -- Much as an amendment prohibiting guns would be unconstitutional.
He was arguing principle.
.
But the parts you bolded merely re-state Article V of the original Constitution. Congress and the States are specifically delegated the power to change the Constitution itself. There is nothing in that document limiting the changes to certain "principles," that I know of anyway. Can you point to such a limitation?
I agree that the 18th was a bad idea, as would be repeal of the 2nd (which would be a casus belli for me), but the Constitution provides for it. "Unconstitutional" means prohibited by a constitution; it is not synonymous with "unprincipled."