The Convention of States: Why the Constitution's Safety Valve Scares Washington More Than It Should

There is a curious thing about constitutional conservatives. We revere the Constitution as written. We quote James Madison on limited government. We cite Justice Antonin Scalia on originalism. We warn that the administrative state has usurped the separation of powers. And then, when someone mentions Article V of the Constitution, the provision that lets the states themselves propose constitutional amendments, too many of us flinch.

The flinch is learned. It has been drilled into us by a chorus of Beltway pundits, think‑tank lawyers, and elected officials who have a vested interest in keeping the federal government's power unchallenged. They call it a runaway convention. They conjure images of a room full of radicals tearing up the Bill of Rights. They warn that the Constitution itself could be rewritten in a weekend. It is a masterful piece of political propaganda, and it works. Even conservatives who otherwise stand for federalism and state sovereignty have become the most effective gatekeepers against the very constitutional tool that could restore those principles. Let us cut through the fear and look at what Article V actually says, what the Founders intended, and why the real runaway has been happening for decades, from a bench, not a convention.

What the Constitution Actually Says

Article V of the United States Constitution provides two methods for proposing amendments. The first is familiar: two‑thirds of both houses of Congress propose amendments, and three‑fourths of the states ratify them. That path has produced all twenty‑seven amendments to date. But there is a second path, one the Founders deliberately preserved. The text reads: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments. The word shall is not optional. When two‑thirds of the states, currently thirty‑four, apply for a convention on the same subject, Congress is constitutionally obligated to call it. The convention then proposes amendments, which must be ratified by three‑fourths of the states, thirty‑eight, to take effect. That is a supermajority firewall at both ends, a higher bar than the congressional path, which requires only a simple majority in both houses.

This is not a backdoor. It is a deliberate, carefully structured safety valve. The Founders knew that Congress, which benefits from its own power, would rarely propose amendments that limit its own authority. They gave the states, the sovereigns that created the federal government in the first place, a way to act when the agent refuses to restrain itself.

Runaway Convention, the Myth and the Mechanics

The nightmare scenario goes like this: the states call a convention only to debate a balanced budget amendment, but once the doors close, the delegates tear up the entire Constitution, eliminate the First Amendment, and install a monarchy. It is a vivid image. It is also constitutionally illiterate.

First, states do not send blank checks. Every state application for a convention specifies the subject. The vast majority of current applications, which have been submitted by nineteen states, are for a convention limited to proposing a balanced budget amendment. Several also address term limits or fiscal restraint. No state has applied for a general convention. No state is forced to participate in a convention that exceeds its legislature's instructions.

Second, the convention itself does not have unlimited power. Article V says the convention proposes amendments, it does not rewrite the Constitution wholesale. And even if a convention somehow exceeded its mandate, any proposed amendment would still require ratification by three‑fourths of the states. Do you really believe that thirty‑eight state legislatures, many of them controlled by different parties, would ratify a radical rewrite of the Bill of Rights? The supermajority requirement makes genuine runaway scenarios nearly impossible.

Third, the states have political and legal tools to enforce limits. Delegates are appointed by state legislatures, which can recall them. The convention's rules can require a supermajority to propose any amendment. And if a convention tried to propose an amendment that no state wanted, the ratification process would kill it instantly. Justice Antonin Scalia, a man who understood constitutional text better than almost anyone, dismissed the runaway fear in a 2014 interview. He said, I think the federal government is not going to come up with amendments that limit its own power. I would be happy to have a convention. It's not a runaway convention, that's nonsense. The states would be in control. Scalia was right. The runaway narrative is a scare tactic designed to preserve the status quo.

The Real Runaway, Judicial Amendment Without Consent

Here is the angle almost nobody covers. We already have a runaway convention, and it is called the Supreme Court. For decades, progressive judges have effectively amended the Constitution from the bench, without a single state legislature's consent. The New Deal Court invented a Commerce Clause that now regulates anything with a substantial effect on interstate commerce, which is to say, everything. Roe v. Wade created a constitutional right nowhere in the text. Obergefell redefined marriage by judicial decree. The administrative state, with its alphabet agencies and unelected rule‑makers, operates outside the constitutional framework of separated powers entirely.

These are not interpretations. They are amendments, imposed by nine lawyers in robes, ratified by nothing but their own confidence. That is the true runaway: a tiny elite rewriting our fundamental law without the consent of the governed. Meanwhile, the same people who panic at the thought of thirty‑eight state legislatures deliberating on a balanced budget amendment have been silent as the judiciary has systematically dissolved the Tenth Amendment. The states have lost their constitutional identity. The federal government, which was supposed to be one of enumerated and limited powers, now regulates everything from the lightbulbs in your living room to the curriculum in your child's classroom.

The convention of states is a democratic alternative to judicial tyranny. It forces the debate into the open, where state legislators, elected by the people, can decide what limits should be placed on federal power. It is a return to representative government, not an escape from it.

The Economic Wisdom in Article V

The case for a convention is not just constitutional, it is economic. Here we draw on the insights of Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell. Hayek's great insight was the knowledge problem: no central planner can possibly gather the dispersed, local knowledge that a free people use every day to make decisions. The federal government in Washington tries to run a country of three hundred and thirty million people across three point eight million square miles with a one‑size‑fits‑all formula. It fails. The one‑size‑fits‑all approach to education, energy, healthcare, and welfare ignores the enormous diversity of regional preferences and conditions.

A convention of states brings that dispersed knowledge to the table. State legislators are closer to the ground. They understand what their local economies need, what their communities value, and what regulations are actually crushing small businesses and families. A convention allows for targeted, structural corrections, a fiscal restraint amendment, term limits, a framework for reining in the administrative state, that restore federalism and let states experiment with solutions.

Sowell's constrained vision also applies. The Founders understood that human beings are imperfect and that power corrupts. They built a system of checks and balances precisely because they did not trust concentrated power, even in a democratic form. The Article V convention is the ultimate check: a mechanism for the states, which predate the federal government, to correct its excesses when it strays from the constitutional bargain.

Why the Fear Persists, and Why We Must Overcome It

The fear of a runaway convention is not an accident. It has been carefully cultivated by think tanks, editorial boards, and elected officials who benefit from the current distribution of power. A balanced budget amendment would constrain spending, which means it would constrain the ability of Congress to buy votes with borrowed money. Term limits would break the careerist culture of Washington. An amendment to limit the administrative state would restore Congress's legislative authority and strip power from unelected agency heads.

The people who hold power do not want to lose it. They will use any argument to protect it, including constitutional arguments that have no basis in the text or the original understanding of the Founders. But we, the citizens, the state legislators, the grassroots conservatives, cannot afford to be intimidated by fearmongering. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and it is not a museum piece. It is a living framework for self‑government, and it contains within itself the means for its own correction.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 85 that the Article V convention was a safety valve for the Constitution, a way to prevent the kind of revolutionary pressure that builds when the people have no peaceful means of redress. The pressure is building now. The national debt is over thirty‑four trillion dollars. The administrative state rules by decree. The federal government treats states as administrative subunits rather than sovereign partners. If we do not use the safety valve, the pressure will find another outlet, and that outlet may not be constitutional at all.

The States Have the Power, They Should Use It

The convention of states is not a radical experiment. It is a conservative, originalist tool rooted in the text of the Constitution and the intentions of the Framers. It is a democratic check on a federal government that has lost all sense of limits. It is the only way to restore the balance of power that our Founding Fathers designed.

The fears are not real. The potential for reform is. Every state legislator, every activist, every citizen who believes in limited government and constitutional self‑rule should take a hard look at Article V and ask: if not this, then what? Waiting on Congress to restrain itself is self‑delusion. Waiting on the courts to reverse course is a fantasy. The only path forward is the one the Founders left us, the path through the states, by the states, for the liberty of the people. It is time to use it.