Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber Another well-considered alternative, presented as a series of criticisms and suggestions rather than as a proposed draft, is William MacDonald's A New Constitution for a New America.[Note 15] He proposes vast changes in the constitution, but no new amendment clause. However, he believes the present Article V is inadequate to accomplish the enormous task he contemplates, and breaks new ground by suggesting that the authority may be found in the Declaration of Independence for a "right of the people to abolish it [their form of government] and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."[Note 16] This right is not abstract or merely rhetorical, he believes, but may support a call for a constitutional convention, though the need for it is surely based on a misinterpretation of the power of the present Article V.[Note 17] An example of a less reflective work is provided by William Gardiner in A Proposed Constitution for the United States.[Note 18] The amendment clause, Article XX, is novel in allowing the unanimous Supreme Court to propose or ratify an amendment, but not both for the same amendment. In the ratification article, XXI, Section 1 stipulates that his constitution can be ratified through Article V of the present constitution. Section 2 permits ratification by a President who chooses to "make himself a dictator after arranging for safeguards that he will not become a permanent dictator." Section 3 describes the poverty and hardships endured by Greek farmers in 595 B.C. Section 4 tells how Solon "became a dictator and did a good job in cleaning up the mess."[Note 19] Notes 1. For a thoroughly documented discussion of the efforts to amend Article V in that period see Lester Bernhardt Orfield, The Amending of the Federal Constitution, University of Michigan Press, 1942, Chapter VI. 2. The six amendment proposals rejected by the states after passing Congress are as follows: (1) a scheme to apportion the members of the House of Representatives (submitted with the Bill of Rights in 1789), (2) a rule barring Congressional salary increases from taking effect until after the next election of representatives (submitted with the Bill of Rights in 1789), (3) a rule to strip U.S. citizenship from any citizen accepting a title, present, or office from a foreign power without the consent of Congress (1810), (4) the Corwin amendment, an attempt to forestall the abolition of slavery, discussed in the text accompanying this note, (5) the Child Labor Amendment, which would have given Congress authority to regulate the labor of those under 18 years of age (1924), and (6) the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have prohibited discrimination by the state and federal governments on account of sex (1972). 3. Orfield, ibid., at 204. 4. Orfield, ibid., at 204-05; Herbert Vandenberg Ames, The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States During the First Century of its History, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897, at 286. 5. See Hollingsworth v. Virginia, 3 U.S. 378 (1798); Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221, 229; John Alexander Jameson, Constitutional Conventions, 4th ed. (1887), ##556-61; Orfield, op. cit. at 50.n.30. 6. Ames, op. cit. See also Michael A. Musmanno, "Proposed Amendments to the Constitution, House Document 551 (70th Congress, 2d Session), 1928, pp. 191-97. 7. February 21, 1787. The resolution is frequently reprinted, e.g. in Allen Johnson (ed.), Readings in American Constitutional History, 1776-1876, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912, pp. 98-99. It also appears, with comparable resolutions of the various states, in W.U. Solberg, The Federal Convention and the Formation of the Union of the American States, The Liberal Arts Press, 1958, p. 54 (call by Congress), pp. 58ff (calls by the States). 8. The fact that the convention wrote an entirely new document, instead of submitting separate amendments, would be improper under the many state constitutions that distinguish "amendment" from "revision". Only revision, for them, embraces wholesale alteration. However, the call for a convention called for "revising the Articles", and in any case the silence of the Articles on the distinction between amendment and revision suggests that the scope of the proposed change was not a violation of the Articles' AC, even if it was a violation of the Congressional resolution calling the convention. 9. T.R. Powell, "Changing Constitutional Phases," Boston University Law Review, 19 (1939) 509-32, at pp. 511-12. 10. See Jonathan Elliott, Debates, vol. 5, J.B. Lippincott, 2d ed., 1886, pp. 352-56, 499-502, 532-34. 11. Orfield believes that the ratification by Congress did cure this defect, while the unanimous ratification by the states did not cure the first defect. Op. cit., at 147. 12. John Alexander Jameson, Constitutional Conventions, Callahan and Co., 4th ed., 1887, #564, p. 596. 13. The best discussion of the suggestions by jurists up to 1942 is Orfield's Chapter VI, op. cit. 14. Her constitution first appeared in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly for February 10, 1872, and has been reprinted in Philip S. Foner (ed.), We, The Other People, University of Illinois Press, 1976, pp. 180-201. 15. William MacDonald, A New Constitution for a New America, B.W. Huebsch, 1921. 176