Fixing the Government

Article V of the U.S. Constitution outlines how the Constitution can be modified through amendments. It was important to the original authors for two reasons that we know about. First, they recognized that the document as originally written was far from perfect. Second, the process of getting the states to agree to the Constitution required making commitments that there would be amendments. There have been many attempts. But so far, the Constitution has been successfully amended only twenty-seven times.

Article V provides two paths to modify the Constitution. One is that states can request a Constitutional convention. Three-fourths of the states need to petition Congress. Then Congress is obligated to establish the convention. At the convention, delegates propose amendments according to the rules established by Congress. These amendments are sent to the states. After three-fourths agree to any amendment, it becomes part of the Constitution. This has never been done. However, in 2022, efforts by people who want to have an amendment that requires a balanced federal budget only need six more states to reach the goal of 38 states requesting a convention.

The second path is for Congress to propose an amendment. When two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds of the House of Representatives agree on a proposed amendment, it is sent to the states. The proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution when three-fourths of the state legislatures approve. This method has always been used with one exception. When Congress sent the twenty-first amendment to the states, they stipulated that ratification must be by state conventions. This amendment repealed the prohibition amendment, eighteen, that banned the sale of alcoholic beverages.

The founders who wanted to protect the interest of enslavers worried that an amendment might end the importation of enslaved people. They successfully inserted wording that forbids any amendment that would end importing slaves until after 1808. They also successfully protected the rule of counting enslaved people as two-thirds of a person for the purpose of calculating representation in Congress.

The states with small populations found support for including in Article V a ban on changing the make-up of the Senate. So, an amendment where each state is not equally represented in the Senate is forbidden unless the state agrees.

The task of writing a new constitution that supports a multi-cultural nation without racism can be accomplished in one of two ways. The first way is that a political party or coalition gains sufficient power to use the rules of the existing Constitution (Article V) to write a new constitution. The second way is the path taken by the American founders of political revolution. It was also the path followed by the failed attempt of the Confederate States of America in 1860 to establish a new constitution. In 1860 a group of individuals who had accumulated power in their state governments established a new governmental structure for 11 southern states.

Although the Constitution sets a very high bar to pass amendments, the process has allowed America to evolve. The government today is very different from what the founders created. As John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III point out, Constitutional amendments come in waves. Amendments are passed after "periods of deep division and gridlock." For example, in 1865 the Constitution had not been amended for 61 years. Then Republicans with control of both houses of Congress passed the Civil War amendments. These amendments freed the slaves, gave Black men the right to vote, and set limits on some of the excesses of state governments.

There are many lessons to learn from the history of the Civil War amendments. The first lesson is that changing the Constitution is not sufficient if we want to become a nation without racism. It is also necessary to root out racism in institutions and both conscious and unconscious biases. A second lesson is the point that Kowal and Codrington make. Today, when the Constitution's inadequacies are so blatant, and the political process is so broken, it is an opportune time to fix the Constitution. A third lesson is that American society can be drastically pointed in a new direction without a revolution. The tool we have is Article V of the Constitution.