The Indiana General Assembly is currently in session, so I urge it to (among other things) altogether repeal a profoundly deceptive article of the Indiana Code.
IC 2-8.2 pretends to establish an airtight statutory system to control the proceedings of any national constitutional convention which might, at some point in the future, be called pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution. Its design clearly relies on assumptions that advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention regularly assert and insist upon. I have never come across such an advocate who was able to offer any basis for those assertions -- much less a sound basis. (I do not find this surprising, because I am familiar enough with the writings, proceedings, and political and legal history from the decades prior to the 1787 Constitutional Convention through the years that followed its ratification, including all of the available information on the debates in the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the subsequent state ratification conventions, that I know that there is no basis for the assurances that present-day advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention give us concerning the full control that state governments would allegedly have over any such convention.)
IC 2-8.2 should be repealed because if people were to read it, they would mistakenly conclude that article 8.2 could ever have legal force.
Do we really want our laws to continue to make false promises (as IC 2-8.2 currently does) that lead people, in reliance on those promises, to advocate a "fast-track" path to proposing unknown amendments (with no way of knowing who would draft them or vote on them, either) to the United States Constitution? I don't.
IC 2-8.2 pretends to establish an airtight statutory system to control the proceedings of any national constitutional convention which might, at some point in the future, be called pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution. Its design clearly relies on assumptions that advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention regularly assert and insist upon. I have never come across such an advocate who was able to offer any basis for those assertions -- much less a sound basis. (I do not find this surprising, because I am familiar enough with the writings, proceedings, and political and legal history from the decades prior to the 1787 Constitutional Convention through the years that followed its ratification, including all of the available information on the debates in the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the subsequent state ratification conventions, that I know that there is no basis for the assurances that present-day advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention give us concerning the full control that state governments would allegedly have over any such convention.)
IC 2-8.2 should be repealed because if people were to read it, they would mistakenly conclude that article 8.2 could ever have legal force.
Do we really want our laws to continue to make false promises (as IC 2-8.2 currently does) that lead people, in reliance on those promises, to advocate a "fast-track" path to proposing unknown amendments (with no way of knowing who would draft them or vote on them, either) to the United States Constitution? I don't.
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