Should Congress legislate the Single Subject Standard and the Contemporaneousness Standard into law? Yes. Even the American Bar Association says so in their document that examined all the gray areas in the amendatory process.
There are two Supreme Court decisions, Dillon v. Gloss in 1921 and Coleman v. Miller in 1939, where the Court gave wide latitude to Congress to control and supervise the amendatory process, provided such control does not violate the clear language of Article V. Congress is within its rights to uphold the Single Subject Standard and the Contemporaneousness Standard even though it is arbitrary, i.e., not written into law.
The basis for the Single Subject Standard is contract law. In the Amendments Convention situation, the states are the principals, the agent is the convention, and the agency agreement is the language in the petitions from the states to Congress for the convention. When Congress "calls" the convention, it states the date, place and subject. The subject is the agency agreement which is extracted from the language in the petitions. This is intended to prevent a convention from straying outside the scope of its subject. It's to avoid "scope creep".
There is also the matter of precedent. Single subject conventions and general conventions were held under the Articles of Confederation, and the precedent for that goes back to English Common Law as delineated by Blackstone.
If you were to ask any member of Congress about the Single Subject Standard, you would get an explanation similar to the one I just gave. If you asked a federal jurist, you'd get the same explanation. If you asked a professor of constitutional law, 99% would give the same answer, and only 1% would argue that the subject is irrelevant, as several on these threads argue. Walker v. US attempted to challenge this state of affairs in 2000, a worthy effort, but Walker was denied cert by the federal courts. This is considered settled law and a time-honored custom. But the ABA is correct that Congress should legislate this, not apply it arbitrarily, so that the states, who do have standing, can test this in court.
Thank you.
Can’t say that I like your answer, but I will try to absorb it.
I think its bunk as article 5 says nothing of a single subject convention and indeed the last convention made a mockery of the very concept.
Just as the idea of a single subject can be just much as it has been used over the last 200 year to inquire the always inherently separate calls of 48 States for convention on the abrtary judgement that they were somehow separate.
If that be the rule then congress may perceptually ignore the calls for convention, for even if the acts were all exactly identical in language and form there is nothing to force congress to recognize them as “together in subject” or any other respect.
The states have always had dissipate interest that even if they should remain silent on those issue, the sheer amount of time to get 34 clocks to strike would be used by congress as to declare them separate.
I think it is possible that there is only one prudent course of action, that while we may hope congress with this new act may be fair, we should nonetheless urge our legislators to keep their own count with open threat to organize and go forthwith with convention anyway without congress.
The worse that may happen is that a number of liberal states should not join this convention just like Rode Island missed the last convention in 1787. We should only be so lucky as we all know a convention would in no way be improved by their inclusion.
So let us trust but verify, and be prepared to act without the cooperation of the very government this convention process is designed to bypass.