Supporters of the Convention of States movement may find this installment of our continuing review of various proposals from Mark Levin's book The Liberty Amendments the most intriguing, given its relationship to Article V and the process of amending the Constitution.
In chapter nine of the book, Levin proposes an amendment to the Constitution whereby the state legislatures would have direct authority to amend the Constitution without making application to Congress (such application as is stipulated in Article V). Such an amendment, Levin argues, would be a significant step in reestablishing federalism and the principles of republican government.
This amendment permits the states to add a constitutional amendment when two-thirds of the legislatures adopt amendments that are "identical in subject and wording to the other state legislatures."
One of the best features of The Liberty Amendments is that for each proposed amendment offered by Levin, he presents it in full as it would appear in the Constitution if adopted, delineated by section at the beginning of each chapter. This makes the proposed amendment easy to follow and understand.
This amendment's details include a six-year limit upon the state legislatures that begins when the first state legislature accepts an amendment. Additionally, no state legislature is permitted to alter or rescind the amendment during the six-year consideration period.
Of significant interest to the COS movement and Article V, the amendment does not require the legislatures to make application to Congress or call state conventions. If two-thirds of the state legislatures agree to a proposed amendment within the six-year window, the Constitution is amended.
It is a complete circumvention of Congress, a nod to the states that created the government in the first place, and it keeps the bar to amend the Constitution high.
This chapter of The Liberty Amendments is perhaps the most substantive of the book. Following the explication of the proposed amendment, it briefly touches upon the statist effort to dismantle the Constitution, led by the patron saint of progressivism and segregationist Woodrow Wilson.
Levin adroitly anticipates allusions to slavery and segregation "that frequently accompanies present-day discussions about, and efforts to, unravel and decentralize the federal Leviathan..." and would no doubt be raised as a rebuke to the states' rights aspect of eliminating Congress from even the minimal role given to it in Article V's convention of states clause.
Yet perhaps the most valuable aspect of this chapter and of greatest interest to COS supporters is Levin's exhaustive research concerning the role of the states not only in creating the government, but also the proposals in the several constitutional ratification conventions that led to the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Levin quotes deeply from the proposals proffered by the ratification conventions in Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. Levin cites the following recommendations from the Bay State that are instantly recognizable to anyone remotely familiar with the Bill of Rights:
- "...That it be explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several States to be by them exercised...
- "...That no person shall be tried for any Crime by which he may incur an infamous punishment or loss of life until he be first indicted by a Grand Jury, except in such cases as may arise in the Government & regulation of the Land and Naval forces...
- "...In civil actions between Citizens of different States every issue of fact arising in Actions at common law shall be tried by a Jury if the parties of either of them request it..."
"The proposed amendment provides the body politic -- that is we, the people, through our state representatives who live among us in our communities and with whom we can personally consult -- with recourse against the federal government's usurpation of individual and state sovereignty. It assumes the citizenry rejects its growing subjugation by a class of governing masterminds who oversee an army of federal bureaucrats, and still desire self-government and representation by consent."Since the states created the government and insisted upon a Bill of Rights to guard against centralization, so too should the states have the ability to bypass Congress to amend the Constitution via the bodies that most directly represent the sovereign citizens.
While The Liberty Amendments should be on every patriot's required reading list, chapter nine is especially essential to understanding the importance of the states.
