Some constitutional conservatives, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rob Natelson for the American Legislative Exchange Council, have been promoting the idea of getting two-thirds of the states to call for an Article V convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Florida senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently made headlines by endorsing the notion. But I fear that it’s not a sound one under present conditions, as I argue in a new piece this week (originally published at The Daily Beast, now reprinted at Cato). It begins:

In his quest to catch the Road Runner, the Coyote in the old Warner Brothers cartoons would always order supplies from the ACME Corporation, but they never performed as advertised. Either they didn’t work at all, or they blew up in his face.

Which brings us to the idea of a so-called Article V convention assembled for the purpose of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution, an idea currently enjoying some vogue at both ends of the political spectrum.

Jacob Sullum at Reason offers a quick tour of some of the better and worse planks in Gov. Abbott’s “Texas Plan” (as distinct from the question of whether a convention is the best way of pursuing them). In using the phrase “Texas Plan,” Gov. Abbott recognizes that in a convention scenario where any and all ideas for amendments are on the table, other states would be countering with their own plans; one can readily imagine a “California Plan” prescribing limits on campaign speech and affirmative constitutional rights to health and education, a “New Jersey Plan” to narrow the Second Amendment and broaden the General Welfare clause, and so forth. Much more on the convention idea in this Congressional Research Service report from 2014 (post adapted and expanded from Overlawyered).

Cato has published often in the past on the difficulties with and inefficiencies of the constitutional amendment process including Tim Lynch’s 2011 call for amending the amendment process itself and Michael Rappaport’s Policy Analysis No. 691 in 2012 with proposals of similar intent. This past December’s Cato Unbound discussion led by Prof. Sanford Levinson included a response essay by Richard Albert describing the founding document as “constructively unamendable” at present, although as a consequence of current political conditions and “not [as] a permanent feature of the Constitution.” And to be fair I should note also Ilya Shapiro had a 2011 post in this space with a perspective (or at least a choice of emphasis) different from mine.