The term "constitutional crisis" is getting thrown around a lot these days, but most politicians and pundits aren't using it correctly.
As constitutional scholar and Convention of States Senior Advisor Rob Natelson explains in a recent article, disagreements between the branches of the federal government do not constitute a "crisis."
Mere battles among branches of government or between the federal government and the states are not constitutional crises, despite ignorant assertions by some in politics and the media. The Constitution deliberately puts branches of government in competition with each other because competition checks power and may further the public good.
On the other hand, when the federal government "reinterprets" the Constitution in such a way that allows them to amass power and disregard the Constitution's original intent -- and when this occurs over an extended period of time -- then we're in a constitutional crisis.
This has been happening since about 1940. At that time, federal politicians began breaking the bounds set by the Constitution, and the courts let them get away with it.
Here are a few examples:
- Incarceration of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps without cause and without habeas corpus;
- Executing a civilian American citizen on American territory without trial by jury;
- waging undeclared wars;
- disregarding the Constitution’s limits on federal fiscal and regulatory powers;
- unconstitutional spying and other invasions of privacy;
- massive transfers of power to unelected administrative agencies; and
- recurrent violations of the Bill of Rights.
The solution? According to Prof. Natelson, we need to call a Convention of States.
A Convention of States can reverse decades of bad Supreme Court decisions by proposing constitutional amendments that reinforce the limitations on federal power our Founders believed were so important.
We'll never elect federal politicians under our current system who will only follow the Constitution as the Founders intended. And we'll never appoint justices who will reverse the last 100 years of judicial activism.
Only by restoring the Constitution itself can we limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and save ourselves from the real constitutional crisis.
Want to get involved? Sign the Convention of States Petition below!
