ConCon hearing: ‘Why the fear?’

More from today’s hearing on HCR 32, calling for an Article V constitutional convention:

McKay Cunningham, an attorney and a law professor at Concordia University, told lawmakers, “Idahoans are not clamoring for you to revise the Constitution.” Rep. Randy Armstrong, R-Inkom, asked him, “The question I have is, the Article V is the Constitution. And it seems like everyone who is opposed to this is almost technically opposed to the Constitution. If we believe in the Constitution and we believe the Constitution is going to work in our behalf, why the fear of having this section of the Constitution work in our behalf? What’s the overriding concern, if you truly believe that the Constitution is there to guide us and help us make corrections to what’s going on in the world today?”

Cunningham said, “There is no doubt that an Article V convention of the states is in Article V, it is part of the Constitution. It is not illegal. It was forethought that this would be a way to amend the Constitution. All of which I readily concede. What we don’t know is what we don’t know. If you read Article V, it doesn’t tell us how many votes you get. … It doesn’t tell us what the parameters would be. … Because of these great uncertainties, there’s more really to worry about than there is to hope for. There are other mechanisms to get done the things we all want done.”

Armstrong said if “something really nefarious happened in this convention, and things are going to spiral out of control and all the things that everybody is prophesying on this thing, they still have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. If the citizens of the United States see this craziness or whatever that everyone’s predicting coming out of this, they’re not going to get the ratification. That’s the check and balance. So why not let them do this, see what they come up? Maybe they come up with something really great, we’ll ratify it. If they come up with something crazy, we won’t ratify it.”

Cunningham responded, “The convention could arguably decide to change the ratification process. That’s precisely what happened in 1787.” When committee Chairman Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, said that would be very difficult to do because it would require amending Article V itself, Cunningham said that’s true, but it’s still what happened historically.

Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, asked Cunningham about the distinction between an Article V convention and a constitutional convention. Cunningham said, “I believe most of that distinction is semantic.”