I've been hearing about this, and wondering: under what procedures would a constitutional convention take place? How would delegates be chosen? How would individual proposals be made and approved/rejected? Assuming the convention produced a replacement Constitution, how would IT be approved/rejected? Answers to those questions aren't in the current Constitution, and they could make all the difference between "meh" and "pretty scary stuff".
Of course the whole idea of a constitutional convention is just another example of the "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more; let's blow something up and then think about what replaces it" sentiment that gave us Brexit and Trump. Regardless of what a constitutional convention produced, it would certainly disrupt things: everybody who knows anything about U.S. law would suddenly find their knowledge obsolete, and it would be amateur hour for the next several decades. Whoever happened to be at the levers of power during those decades (and it's likely to be the same paranoid right-wingers who have been planning a constitutional convention for years) would leave an indelible stamp on the character of the nation.
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Date: 2017-10-14 11:07 am (UTC)Of course the whole idea of a constitutional convention is just another example of the "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more; let's blow something up and then think about what replaces it" sentiment that gave us Brexit and Trump. Regardless of what a constitutional convention produced, it would certainly disrupt things: everybody who knows anything about U.S. law would suddenly find their knowledge obsolete, and it would be amateur hour for the next several decades. Whoever happened to be at the levers of power during those decades (and it's likely to be the same paranoid right-wingers who have been planning a constitutional convention for years) would leave an indelible stamp on the character of the nation.