| Conventional Wisdom Article V of the Constitution allows two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress to propose amendments to the document and a three-fourths majority of the states to ratify them. Scholars and frustrated advocates of constitutional change have often criticized this process for being too difficult. Despite this, state legislatures have yet to use the other primary method that Article V outlines for proposing amendments: it permits two-thirds of the state legislatures to petition Congress to call a convention to propose amendments that, like those proposed by Congress, must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. JOHN R. VILE is a professor of political science and dean of the University Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University. He has written extensively on the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the constitutional amending process, proposed alternatives to the U.S. Constitution, and Supreme Court decisions and other contemporary understandings of the document. Vile is the author of numerous books on the U.S. Constitution and the constitutional amending process and of The Wisest Council in the World: Restoring the Character Sketches by William Pierce of Georgia of the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 (Georgia). |