From: Dhlazare at aol.com Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 10:22:53 EST
Doug:
John Mage should reread Art. V, the final clause of which states that "no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." Since any state can veto any deviation whatsoever from the principle of equal state suffrage, abandoning this provision would require the approval of not just three-fourths of the states, the case with ordinary amendments, but the approval of all fifty. Given the unlikelihood of Wyoming, Vermont, the Dakotas, et al. are no more likely to surrender this all-important constitutional privilege than the French aristocracy was to give up their const'l privileges prior to 1789, there is simply no way this can happen under the present constitutional regime.
Not that various scholars have not tried to figure out ways around this problem. While the wording seems clear and unambiguous, it has been argued that the clause itself could be removed via the normal two-thirds/three-fourths rule. But then Akhil Reed Amar, the Yale constitutional law prof, has argued that based on the Preamble, "we the people of the United States" could remove the two-thirds/three-fourths rule through a simple majority vote. But whether the issue is Art. V in whole or in part, any attempt to end-run the Constitution in this manner would itself amount to such a marked departure from established constitutional principles as to constitute a revolutionary break. With the right wing rising in defense of the Constitution and the left rising against the uprising, it would be a signal for civil war, just as it was in 1860-61. While the Constitution has no ends of things to say about who has power UNDER the Constitution, it has no answer as to who, if anyone, has authority OVER the Constitution. Merely to ask is something of a revolutionary act.
Dan.
> >The obstacle is not the wording of the Constitution. There's nothing
>>in Article V that says that Article I cannot be amended by the
>>Convention to change the manner in which the two Senators "from each
>>state" are chosen - a clause that has already been amended
>>incidentally - so as to require their choice by, say, a global
>>electorate, or a local electorate qualified by having been
>>prosecuted by the previous regime for the possession of controlled
>>substances, or by two-thirds vote of the Board of the Pacifica
>>Foundation. But overcoming the obstacle via a revolution rather
>>than through Constitutional Interpretation seems much the more
>>attractive idea. Let's.
>>
>>john mage