Think about this 2005 quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi:
“It is a decision of the Supreme Court,” she said, referencing the eminent domain ruling in Kelo v. New London that allowed governments to seize private property. “If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken.”
Pelosi is right about one thing: Supreme Court decisions do require a constitutional amendments to overrule. Every time SCOTUS meets, they change the law of the land, and there isn’t anything Congress can do about it short of proposing a new amendment.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be. The Founders didn’t invest the Court with God-like power. They didn’t want nine individuals to be able to supercede the will of the people and the states. They envisioned a federalist system in which the states check the power of the federal government, ensuring that no one body has the power to destroy freedom.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly the situation today. Pelosi’s comment is even more true in 2020 than it was in 2005, and even with the new makeup of the Court, our top nine justices aren’t about to divest themselves of the power they’ve accumulated.
That’s why we still need an Article V Convention of States. If Congress won’t propose amendments overruling bad court decisions, the states will. A Convention of States empowers state legislatures to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments can both overturn faulty court decisions of the past as well as institute mechanisms to hold the court accountable for bad decisions in the future.
Millions are standing up to D.C. by signing the Convention of States Petition. Will you?
