As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.
The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.
But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.
Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, will introduce legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.
Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.
“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.
Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican from West Texas and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been a leading convention proponent. He has introduced legislation that would require the head of the National Archives to track state applications and has said that a convention should have been called in 1979 when, he believes, enough states had requested one.
Since 2016, the year Mr. Trump was elected president the first time, nine states that had Democratic-controlled legislatures have been concerned enough that they rescinded their decades-old requests for constitutional amendments, sometimes with support from their fellow Republican legislators. They feared that they were leaving open the door for a Republican-led Congress and state legislatures to pursue a conservative revision of the laws underpinning national governance.
The founding fathers set almost no rules governing how such a constitutional convention would work. Article V of the Constitution says that the document can be amended if legislatures in two-thirds of states — now 34 out of 50 — agree to convene for the purpose. But it does not set guidelines for how the gathering would function. If the convention produces a proposed amendment, the change would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
Following last month’s election, 28 state legislatures will be controlled by Republicans, 18 by Democrats and the rest will be split, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The founding document does not say whether 34 states need to agree on the specific amendment topic or whether signaling that they want a convention for any reason is enough to trigger proceedings. There is no explanation of whether each state at the convention would get one vote or more, whether topics not on the agenda can be raised, whether lobbyists or special interest groups could participate, or who would referee disagreements. Constitutional scholars are unclear how even the most basic questions would be resolved.
More than 34 states appear to have standing requests to change the Constitution, some dating back more than 150 years, according to the Article 5 Library, a bare-bones website that scholars pointed to as the best known repository of applications to change the Constitution.
The list reads like a chronicle of generational concerns. In the early 20th century, more than 20 states wanted to insert anti-polygamy laws into the Constitution. In 1949, six states wanted to create a “world federal government.” Many of those applications remain active.
In more recent decades, some states have sought to install a balanced budget requirement for the federal government or give the president line-item veto authority.
At a congressional hearing focused on budget matters Wednesday, Mr. Arrington said that not holding a convention in 1979 was “a constitutional travesty” and that a convention should still be called today. At the hearing, David Walker, a former comptroller general of the United States, said that several states were planning to sue Congress for failing to call that convention.
The congressman, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed, and Mr. Walker did not respond to a request for comment.
It is not clear how seriously Republicans would pursue a convention. Some Democrats have dismissed concerns as overblown, given the legal ambiguity around how to convene one and the fact that 38 states would have to approve any constitutional amendment — difficult to imagine in a polarized political era.
Still, Mr. Trump has said that he wants to change the 14th Amendment so that it would not grant citizenship to anybody born in the United States. Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, has pushed conservative statehouses to call for a convention, saying at a news conference on the matter last year that “Washington is never going to fix itself.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and a constitutional law expert, called the concerns of Democrats “very legitimate.”
“The fact that we haven’t had one since 1787 leads me to believe it’s unlikely to happen, but we’re in an unprecedented time in American history, so it’s hard to make predictions about anything,” he said. “It’s all uncharted territory.”
In California, Mr. Wiener wants to do what he can to make sure that a convention will never take place.
California’s oldest call for a constitutional convention stems from 1911, when the state supported one that would allow for a direct popular vote of senators instead of having legislatures elect them. That proposal became a reality through the other mechanism outlined in Article V: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress proposed the 17th Amendment, which was ratified by the states in 1913. That path has produced 27 amendments, the most recent of which came in 1992 to prevent members of Congress from giving themselves pay raises.
Many of California’s seven calls for a constitutional convention relate to fairly mundane topics such as campaign finance reform and motor vehicle taxes. California is also among the six states that wanted to create a world federal government, a request that remains on the books.
If Mr. Wiener’s legislation is enacted, California would follow the path of other Democratic-led states that have withdrawn their calls for conventions since 2016, including New Jersey, Oregon and Illinois. New York most recently did so by passing a law this spring that rescinded all of its previous applications, including one from 1789.
While most of California’s proposed amendments are dated, state lawmakers did approve a request last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom to pass a gun-control amendment. His idea would prohibit civilians from buying military-style firearms and install universal background checks on firearm purchases.
Mr. Wiener’s bill would rescind Mr. Newsom’s proposal, along with California’s six other standing requests. Mr. Wiener said he had not yet had a discussion with the Democratic governor about the legislation, which would not require Mr. Newsom’s signature.
A spokesman for the governor pointed out that his measure came with poison-pill language that would void his request if other states used it to convene a convention on another topic. None of the other 49 states have pursued an amendment similar to Mr. Newsom’s, which some of the governor’s critics considered politically impossible and an attempt to generate national attention.
Given the broad control that Republicans will have in Washington next year, other Democratic-led states may be motivated to rescind their constitutional convention requests. Lawmakers in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut previously introduced resolutions to take back their applications, but those measures stalled.
By the count of David Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on constitutional conventions, the highest number of active requests for a convention on one specific topic is 28, for a balanced budget. But, he said, if Article V is interpreted as allowing any request to count toward convening a constitutional convention, the 34-state threshold has already been reached.
“If Congress declares under whatever crazy counting theory the convention advocates support that we’ve met the threshold, then we’ll have a convention,” Mr. Super said.
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