Timothy Lynch (Cato Institute) has posted Amending Article V to Make the Constitutional Amendment Process Itself Less Onerous (Tennessee Law Review, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The thesis of this article is that the procedure for amending the Constitution in Article V is defective and should be changed. The American Constitution created a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. By making the Constitution difficult to amend, the framers thought they could preserve it, but the design failed. In light of the erosion in the original design of the Constitution, how can anyone be confident that other constitutional safeguards will not be lost? This article maintains that the difficult amendment procedure laid out in Article V is primarily responsible for our current predicament. An easier amendment process will bridge the gulf that presently exists between the constitutional text and the government we actually have. Instead of the two-thirds vote necessary for Congress to propose amendments or for the states to call a convention, we should lower the threshold to a simple majority. And instead of the three-fourths vote necessary for the states to ratify an amendment, we should lower that threshold to two-thirds.
Posted at 7:00 AM