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Article V 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, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress

If congress has no say in how the convention is organized, then why must congress call the convention at all? Makes no sense.

What if congress refuses to call a convention? What then?

If congress has no say in how the convention is organized, then why must congress call the convention at all?

Good question. The answer is right there in the Constitution itself..... Congress is charged with the oversight responsibility of all legislation. Therefore, if the states take it upon themselves to do legislation that the Congress won't then the legislative oversight over the law is "officially" still with Congress, who "called" or authorized the convention.

What if congress refuses to call a convention? What then?

Another great question. THEN, we have a constitutional crisis, where Congress has abrogated its duties in defiance of the Constitution. We call that "insurrection." Were I the head of the state governors at that time, I would call for the arrest of the speaker of the House, demand a floor vote for a convention, and call for the arrest and imprisonment of all "nay" votes or no votes.

Whether I would get it is another story, but it would become clear that there is no rule of law, the republic is over, and we should be looking at plan b... and preparing for civil war. Either way we would be in uncharted waters and in a heck of a mess. I don't think there are that many members of Congress willing to risk jail

I think the vast majority would vote to call, and the ones who would not would be on a plane to St Kits by nightfall.

At various times, applications for a convention were tallied by the Secretary of State or the Speaker of the House. Today the Archivist of the United States handles that function. He maintains a spreadsheet with topics for columns and the states for rows.

When a topic hits the magic number of 34 states (two thirds of the states), he sends a memo to the Speaker of the House and President Pro Tem of the Senate advising them that the threshold has been reached for a Convention of the States under the terms of Article V. At that point Congress has the ministerial duty of setting the time and place of the Convention and does so by issuing a Joint Resolution of Congress. The language of the applications that hit the two thirds point is added by Congress to the Joint Resolution, and that defines the purview of the Convention.

In terms of contract law, the states are the principals, and the Convention is the agent of the principals. The purview of the contract is the application language extracted by Congress from the state applications and added to the convention call via the Joint Resolution. An agent may not go outside the limit of his contract with his principal, which is why the Convention is legally restricted to the application language.