Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber The Declaration of Independence, for example, allows a right to alter or abolish government only when government has become "destructive" of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and only when a "long train of abuses and usurpations" reveals a "design" to put the people under "absolute despotism". After government is abolished it must be rebuilt in such form as "shall seem [to the people] most likely to effect their safety and happiness." This language provides no bright lines, but that does not make it legally useless. It is at least as clear and determinate as "high crimes and misdemeanors", "commerce...among the several states", "all laws which shall be necessary and proper", "due process", or "equal protection of the laws". The language of most state clauses is less specific. The people are sometimes given the right to alter or abolish government whenever "the public good may require it" (Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota), whenever "the public welfare may require it" (Utah), or whenever the people "deem it necessary" (Colorado, Ohio). Other states recognize the right only "when [the people's] safety and happiness require it" (Maine), or "when their safety, prosperity, and happiness require it" (Massachusetts). The most specific language recognizes the right "whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual" (New Hampshire). Two states leave the right unlimited and unqualified (Indiana, South Carolina). Many of the other states limit the right with language suggesting procedural restraints, although of the weakest kind, for example, saying that the people may alter or abolish their government "in such manner as they deem proper" (Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wyoming) or "in such manner as they may deem expedient" (Maryland, Texas) or "in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal" (West Virginia). South Dakota limits the right to alter or abolish government to "lawful and constitutional methods", Rhode Island limits it to "an explicit and authentic act of the whole people",[Note 4] and West Virginia vests it not in "the people" but in a "majority of the community". Just what a state could intend by including such a right when procedures for amendment are already provided is far from clear. The language of the Declaration of Independence, imitated by most of the states at least in the phrase "alter or abolish", was in its historical context seeking a justification for revolution, or for severance from one's erstwhile sovereign without its consent. Thomas Jefferson may have chosen the words "alter or abolish" in part for their euphemistic effect, suggesting something closer to amendment than revolt. But clearly a right to revolt was sought by Jefferson and clearly one was read into his language.[Note 5] Leaving aside the questions whether Jefferson sought a legal or moral right to revolt, and whether a legal right to revolt is a contradiction in terms, we may still ask whether the states that took over the "alter or abolish" language meant to incorporate into their constitutions a right to revolt of any kind, or merely a strange sort of amendment power, or just a grandiloquent statement of principle. Put this way the question is historical and the answer undoubtedly varies among the states. The theory that the right to alter or abolish is just a rhetorical gesture, though a very solemn one, may be true of some states, but not all. The South Dakota clause that limits the right to "lawful and constitutional methods" evidently adds nothing to the law beyond the AC, unless it is a symbolic statement of principle. But most states put the right in their Bill of Rights with other rights that are unquestionably propositions of living law routinely enforced by courts, and do not qualify them with words that limit them, in effect, to the AC. Even New Hampshire, however, which has the most specific language (noted above), and which places the right in its Bill of Rights, has added to the statement of the right what must be called a rhetorical embellishment. After announcing the right, the clause continues, "The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind." The flourish, ironically, casts doubt on the legal validity of the preceding right —and the possibility that New Hampshire's specific language may be symbolic casts doubt on the more formulaic clauses of other states. But we know that at least two of the state clauses have been taken as propositions of law announcing an operative right. The present constitution of Tennessee (1870) is the only one in the nation's history, I believe, that names as its enabling authority the right to alter or abolish government found in its predecessor (1834),[Note 6] rather than the prior AC, or federal enabling legislation, or something else. Similarly, the Rhode Island Supreme Court declared in 1935 that a constitutional convention could be called by the legislature under the authority of the right to alter or abolish (which in Rhode Island is actually a right to "make and alter") when the AC was silent on the permissibility of conventions. In Re Opinion to the Governor, 55 R.I. 56, 178 A. 433 (1935).[Note 7] The Rhode Island right to "make and alter" required "an explicit and authentic act of the whole people", which the court held was to be had by a simple statewide majority vote, not on the permissibility of calling the convention, but to ratify the product of any convention called unilaterally by the legislature. Id. at 437. This suggests another possible theory. Many states distinguish "amendment", which is piecemeal, from "revision", which is wholesale. Of the states drawing this distinction some do and some do not have an AC capable of both powers. Conceivably the right to alter or abolish is the only way some states have found to justify wholesale revision in the absence of explicit accommodating language in their AC, or in the case of some early constitutions, in the absence of an AC itself.[Note 8] This theory may also explain why California, for example, which lacked a right to alter or abolish in its constitution of 1849, had to resort to self-amendment so that its AC would provide for the replacement of the whole constitution. Some state language supports this theory more than others. The Massachusetts clause, for example, recognizes the "right to institute government, and to reform, alter, or totally change the same" (emphasis added) which suggests that the drafters did not believe that "reform" or "alter" sufficed. Similarly, the right to alter or abolish could differ from an ordinary AC by including the right to "abolish". The power to amend might reasonably be restricted to exchanging one form of government for another, but never for exchanging government for non-government. Of course, some state clauses speak of abolishing the form of government, not government per se, and might be as limited as ACs in this regard. But insofar as revolt includes the abolition of government per se, then a true right to revolt probably could not be read into an AC, even if most revolutionary goals 125