Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber limits Article V by impliedly repealing its power to do otherwise in the future. Prohibition (the Eighteenth Amendment) would limit the power of the AC so that the repeal of prohibition (the Twenty-First amendment) would be impermissible. Here is a more reflexive form of the same problem. Article IV, §4 guarantees a republican form of government. Would we violate that guarantee if the AC were used to enact the complete self-repeal of the AC, leaving behind no official power to amend? A strong case could be made that such self-repeal would compromise our republican form of government. But just as strong a case could be made that the self-repeal of the AC would impliedly repeal Article IV, §4 pro tanto. One may conclude that amendments either do not impliedly repeal all preexisting provisions irreconcilable with themselves, or that if they do, such repeals (especially those of the amending power) are ignored in practice. A simpler solution is that, while an amendment and the AC may be "inconsistent" by the deontic test, their conflict is nevertheless "reconcilable" by allowing the amendment to stand until repealed and by giving the AC the power of repeal. What seems undeniable, however, is that any significant amendment will be inconsistent with the AC by the deontic test. Indeed, if "significant" means permitting what was once forbidden or vice versa, then this is a tautology. Not only would this bar repeal of valid amendments under the inference model, but even the enactment of valid amendments. Any interpretation of the lex posterior principle is empirically false if it makes every significant amendment into (1) an immutable limitation on the AC, (2) an implied repeal pro tanto of the AC, (3) impliedly self-entrenched as a consequence of its implied powers of repeal, or (4) an impossibility ab initio. Again, this is proved empirically by the acceptance of the Twenty-First amendment, adopted under the AC. This is another area in which doctrinal difficulties, normally ignored, require us to reject the inference model. B. Was the adoption of the Tenth Amendment a case of self-amendment? The argument that the Tenth Amendment amended the AC pro tanto is much more plausible and historically important than that for the Fourteenth Amendment (see Section 16.C below).[Note 9] Outside the courts the debate is best summarized by Selden Bacon,[Note 10] arguing that the Tenth Amendment must be understood to have amended Article V, and by Henry W. Taft,[Note 11] arguing against. The debate was stimulated by the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) in 1919. Prohibition was arguably the first constitutional amendment that deprived the people of rights they had previously enjoyed. But there is some disagreement about this. Bacon argues that the Eighteenth Amendment uniquely violates the "reserved powers" of the people and states guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, but some courts have wondered why the same cannot be said of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments.[Note 12] In any event Bacon maintains that an amendment that deprives the people of any of their rights must be ratified in state conventions, not state legislatures. Ratification by convention would manifest the consent of the people, supposedly required by the Tenth Amendment, whereas ratification by legislature would merely provide the consent of the states. Article V gives Congress the power, and apparently the unfettered discretion, to decide whether ratification of a proposed amendment shall be done by convention or by legislature ("as one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress"). Bacon argues that however unlimited this discretion was in 1789, the Tenth Amendment limited that discretion in 1791 and required ratification by convention for every amendment that would limit the people's rights. Bacon insists that[Note 13] if the power to be conferred by the [proposed] amendment is one that the people alone could grant (before Article V was adopted), then the people reserve that power for themselves, and take it away from the legislatures. It followed that ratification of such amendment must be by the convention method, not by legislatures.[Note 14] He summarizes his position as follows:[Note 15] The Tenth Amendment, in short, said: If the Federal Government wants added direct powers over the people or the individual rights of the people, it must go to the people to get them; ...the right, at the option of Congress, to get such added powers from any other source [such as state legislatures] is wiped out. Because the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by state legislatures, not state conventions, Bacon believes it was adopted defectively and was therefore void.[Note 16] After the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 the Supreme Court heard four separate challenges to its validity, and upheld it each time. Hawke v. Smith, No. 1,253 U.S. 221 (1920); National Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S.350 (1920); Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368 (1921); and Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939). Each of these cases said in dictum that the Tenth Amendment did not amend Article V. That question was addressed directly in U.S. v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931), and decided in favor of the validity of Prohibition and the absence of any implied amendment of the amending clause.[Note 17] If the Eighteenth Amendment and the cases upholding its validity raised Selden Bacon's ire, he was plunged in despair by the holding of Leser v. Garnet, 258 U.S. 130 (1922), which upheld the validity of the Nineteenth Amendment (Women's Suffrage). Several states had tried to rescind their ratifications of the Nineteenth Amendment by stating in their constitutions that their regrettable votes were utterly inoperative and void. The Supreme Court disallowed the rescissions, stating,[Note 18] 113