The Common Law of Constitutional Conventions

Professor Jill Lepore's Jorde Symposium lecture paints a rich portrait of state constitutional conventions as engines of democratization during the 1800s and issues a dire warning about the United States' ongoing amendment drought. Citing their unfamiliarity, however, Lepore declines to consider federal constitutional conventions as a possible corrective. In this response Essay, I argue: first, that Lepore's marginalization of Article V's convention mechanism is in tension with her own historical and normative account; second, that while Lepore's wariness of conventions is entirely understandable given the state of our politics-and entirely commonplace among progressives-it carries significant risks of its own; and third, that constitutional conventions are not as unfamiliar as they might seem and that our long experience with this institution at the state level supplies guidance as to how a federal convention might be made less frightening and more legitimate. If we wish to revive the Framers' "philosophy of amendment" and reclaim popular control over fundamental law, we must figure out how to operationalize that philosophy through credible procedures. The common law of constitutional conventions is a vital resource for this task.