[nathanbedford]

I have had time to skim read the ABA paper to which you kindly referred me and other readers and I highly recommend it not for its conclusions but for its comprehensive treatment of many aspects of the problem.

What is interesting about the Article V convention is that it really brings the matter of legitimate government directly in front of us and compels us to consider whether we can fall back on the institutions that the ABA, for example, assumes that we must rely on. But are we not, after all, starting afresh?

Thanks for the reference, I will read it closely when I have time.

[Publius]

I ran across the ALEC document in my work with the local Tea Party last year. I have some issues with the author's conclusions because he had never read the ABA report.

I had the ABA report left over on disk because of the work I did from 1998 to 2000 editing Walker's brief in Walker v. US.

What I gained from the ABA report was threefold.

First, it identified all the gray areas, A decade before the Equal Rights Amendment opened the issues of whether Congress could change the ratification window of an amendment, and whether a state could rescind an earlier ratification, the ABA report identified these as potential areas of conflict that should be addressed by Congress.

Second, it went into detail as to just what rights Congress may have to regulate the conduct of an Amendments Convention based on the precedents contained in the Dillon and Coleman decisions. If Congress has its back to the wall and is forced to call an Amendments Convention, there will be an attempt on the part of Congress to put as much control as possible on the conduct of a convention, and the ABA report telegraphs the ruling class's strategy in advance.

Third, it covers the possible impact of the Reynolds decision, aka "One Man/One Vote", and has a model for that just in case the Supreme Court feels that this decision applies to an Amendments Convention. It also addresses the issue of election of convention delegates versus appointment by state legislature, which is critical.

Walker and I disagreed on Point #3. He accepted the ABA report on this issue and I didn't. I believe that an Amendments Convention is such a primal act of the Republic that state legislatures should appoint and instruct the delegates, and that the convention should be conducted on a "One State/One Vote" basis.

If you combine the two documents, you get a comprehensive view of the issues at hand and the gray areas.