Thirty-Thousand.org

Proposed amendment: "Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed."

See RepealAmendment.org

This amendment would certainly put some teeth back into the Tenth Amendment!

It is basically a streamlined version of an Article V convention (as provided by the Constitution), but with the narrow purpose of negating existing laws rather than proposing new amendments. It's a brilliant idea. Who could oppose it? The political elites and the special interests who fund them.

I believe the Repeal Amendment would be better than nothing... but Repealing the 17th Amendment is the only true solution as it would give the states their voice back.

Those pushing for the Repeal Amendment agree. But they decided to try this route because they think it will be easier to pass. I disagree. We don't need new laws so much as we need getting rid of the bad ones.

One drawback to the Repeal Amendment is that Congress can just keep on passing the very law that just got vetoed by the states. They can play this game forever. With 17 gone, the states can nip dumb laws before they are passed. And they only need a simple majority to do so.

The whole idea of having two houses is that one is to represent the state governments and the other are those directly representing we the people. Having two houses of the same type of representation is redundant.

The book, THE BALTIMORE PRINCIPLES, points out that this was the way our colonial governments operated during the 125 years prior to the revolution. The upper houses represented the lower governments (appointed) while the lower house had representatives for the people (elected). These vertical checks and balances were one of the reasons why our colonies were so great (and so independent) compared to other British colonies.

dogtired wrote:We don't need new laws so much as we need getting rid of the bad ones.

Which is precisely what the "Repeal Amendment" is intended to do! There are no perfect solutions, there are only better solutions. Representational enlargement, repealing the 17th, the "Repeal Amendment" are all compatible solutions that would improve our republic.

JEQuidam wrote:

dogtired wrote:We don't need new laws so much as we need getting rid of the bad ones.

Which is precisely what the "Repeal Amendment" is intended to do! There are no perfect solutions, there are only better solutions. Representational enlargement, repealing the 17th, the "Repeal Amendment" are all compatible solutions that would improve our republic.

This sounds like a good idea at first, but I fear it could drastically backfire in a slew of future Supreme Court cases.

The States grant power to the Federal government. If Congress writes an unconstitutional law, the 10th Amendment is supposed to be used to protect individuals and states alike. If the Repeal Amendment is ratified into the Constitution, the federal government could argue that unless the States opt to execute their power to repeal Congressional laws, then those States are by omission granting said power to the Congress.

The States should be using the 10th Amendment more, and they should be using Article V where the 10th Amendment fails. If a Congressional law that would otherwise get a 2/3rd's repeal from the States somehow passes muster both through a Supreme Court 10th Amendment challenge and through a failure in an Amendment Convention, I've no doubt the public will soon elect representatives who will repeal the highly controversial law upon entry into Congress.

The Repeal Amendment is too dangerous a rabbit-hole for me to jump down.