Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber was probably the most "legislative" amendment in our history, and it survived four challenges to its constitutionality, including arguments that it was impermissibly legislative (see Section 16). Marbury is also opposed here by a fellow delegation theorist. William Frierson has argued that even amendments that are concededly legislative are permissible and need not be defended as borderline "non-legislative" or "constitutional" amendments. His basic premise is that the constitution delegates legislative power to Congress in the first place, and the delegator of a power must be able to exercise the power it delegates.[Note 42] The argument against legislative amendments, however, is most often made on policy grounds. One of the most thorough treatments of the policy questions is by Margaret Center Klinglesmith,[Note 43] who argued that the greater difficulty of amending the constitution, as opposed to statutes, made it imprudent to set the "ephemeral and the local" so far above responsive procedures. She was certainly right as a matter of policy. She was also right to note that the question whether there are any implied limitations on the amending power "is a momentous question,"[Note 44] for it will tell us whether our AC is omnipotent and whether our basic rights may in principle be repealed by a valid law (see Section 16). Such policy arguments at best can show that legislative amendments, or other allegedly ultra vires amendments, are unwise, not illegal. Lester Bernhardt Orfield generally believes that no legal arguments are sound that might establish implied limitations to the federal amending power.[Note 45] Express limitations, however, might be valid.[Note 46] He is unsure and suggests that an express limitation such as that protecting the equal suffrage of the states in the Senate, "could probably be repealed by a unanimous vote of the states."[Note 47] Limitations not so closely tied to individual state consent could probably be repealed by the normal supermajorities. Walter F. Dodd also rejects the idea of implied limitations on the federal amendment power.[Note 48] (State ACs are all impliedly limited by a requirement that state constitutions conform to the federal constitution.) A more radical and confident statement is to be found in McCullen v. Williams, 221 Ga. 358, 144 S.E.2d 911, 916 (1965): [A]ny attempt to limit the will of the people with respect to the substantive content of an amendment would amount to a gross infringement upon their sovereign right to establish, modify, and alter their organic law as they see fit.... If an AC is not absolutely valid, supreme, and omnipotent, but only valid, supreme, and omnipotent until amended, then is it limited? The paradox of self-amendment may inspire one to think of the validity of an AC as existing under a time limit (see Sections 10 and 14). Does that time limit comprise a limit on the power of the AC? The answer must be no, for any amendment that is authorized at all is authorized by an AC that is valid until amended, provided it is made while the AC is valid. If the time limit is not set for any particular moment, but is implied by the possibility of an amendment undoing its validity, supremacy, or omnipotence, then only self-amendment could impose the contemplated limitation. An AC that is unlimited but for self-imposed self-limitations has self-embracing omnipotence, and can enact any amendment whatsoever until it takes away its own power to do so. If the time limit is set for a particular time, say 12:01 AM, 2000 A.D., then the AC is under a sunset clause (see Section 14), but could still enact any amendment before the expiration date which an AC not under a sunset clause could enact. Similarly, a time limit contradicts continuing omnipotence, but would not prevent the adoption of any amendment that continuing omnipotence could adopt. The only possible exception is a repeal of the time limit itself, which might be entrenched, at least impliedly. If the validity of entrenchment is upheld, such self-amendment would be prevented. Alternately, repealing the time limit might be considered a way in which the AC could entrench itself against future amendment. If self-amendment is possible, then self-imposed self-entrenchment of the AC is possible. If the time limit is put into words that forbid extensions of the expiration date, then the question is converted to the permissibility of the self-disentrenchment of the AC. For all these problems, see Section 9. Some limitations that have been alleged to be implied in the federal AC have been litigated and dismissed by courts. For example, some have argued that all amendments must be "germane" to the existing text, that is, specifically addressed to an existing clause and amending it. Such a limitation would preclude all amendments by addition and, in some versions, all germane amendments that fail to state which clauses they are to amend. This theory was rejected in State of Ohio v. Cox, 257 F. 334, 342 (S.D. Ohio 1919).[Note 49] Because Article V says that Congress may propose amendment "whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary," some have argued that no amendment is valid unless Congress makes a specific finding of "necessity". This argument was levelled against the extremely unpopular Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), as was the "germaneness" argument and many others, as part of a series of desperate but clever attempts to invalidate it (see Section 16). The Supreme Court rejected the "necessity" theory, and found a sufficient declaration of necessity implicit in a two- thirds vote. State of Rhode Island v. Palmer, 253 U.S. 350 (1920). Klinglesmith argued that the framers' use of the phrase "whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary" is evidence of their intent to prohibit legislative amendments.[Note 50] One of the most relentlessly ideological arguments for implied limitations is Arthur Machen's against the validity of the Fifteenth Amendment (Black Suffrage).[Note 51] Machen bases his argument on the only express limitation on the federal AC still in effect: "that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate" (Article V). From this express limitation Machen infers many implicit limitations, including the necessity of preserving the Senate,[Note 52] preserving the states, preserving the states as entities capable of giving consent, and preventing any alteration of "the composition of a state" without its consent.[Note 53] He argues that "a state" is its people, particularly its citizens and voters, which immediately after the Civil War meant the white people of a state. The right of the white people of a state to elect two senators (by way of the state legislature) is taken away by the enfranchisement of blacks, especially in states like South Carolina where blacks outnumbered whites in 1870 when the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified. This would be legally irrelevant if it were not that Machen finds this dilution of white 51