Eagle Forum is opposed to a Constitutional Convention or an Article V Convention of StatesPhyllis Schlafly writes:  “they are fooling themselves when they suggest that Article V creates a path to bypass Congress with a “convention of states….The only power the states have under Article V is the opportunity to submit an “application” (petition) humbly beseeching Congress to call a convention. Hundreds of such applications have been submitted over the years, with widely different purposes and wording, many applications were later rescinded, and some purport to make the application valid for only a particular amendment such as a federal balanced budget or congressional term limits.

The highest authority to ever speak on an amendments convention was Chief Justice Warren Burger.  He said, “I have repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.  After a Convention is convened, it would be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like its agenda…Our 1787 Constitution was referred by several of its authors as a ‘miracle.’ Whatever gain might be hoped for from a new Constitutional Convention could not be worth the risks involved…” . http://www.eagleforum.org/topics/concon/pdf/WarrenBurger-letter.pdf

James Madison wrote:  “You wish to know my sentiments on the project of another general Convention as suggested by New York. I shall give them to you with great frankness . . . If a General Convention were to take place for the avowed and sole purpose of revising the Constitution, it would naturally consider itself as having a greater latitude than the Congress appointed to administer and support as well as to amend the system; it would consequently give greater agitation to the public mind; an election into it would be courted by the most violent partisans on both sides; it wd. probably consist of the most heterogeneous characters; would be the very focus of that flame which has already too much-heated men of all parties; would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts but inadmissible in other parts of the Union might have a dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric. Under all these circumstances it seems scarcely to be presumable that the deliberations of the body could be conducted in harmony, or terminate in the general good. Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a Second, meeting in the present temper of America, and under all the disadvantages I have mentioned. . . .