In early October, Harvard Law School spent two days on the part of the Constitution Washington would rather you skip. University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson told the audience that the Constitution in its current form “constitutes a clear and present danger, even an existential risk to our national survival,” Harvard Law Today reported.
Levinson has the diagnosis backward, and Article 5 answers his question. My thesis: a reform aimed at Congress can’t depend on Congress’s permission, the founders understood that, and conservatives who treat the convention route like a haunted house have forgotten who built it.
Picture Article 5 as a building with two doors. Through the first, two-thirds of both houses of Congress propose an amendment. Through the second, two-thirds of the state legislatures apply, and Congress must call a convention. Either way, three-fourths of the states must ratify, which means 38.
The second door arrived late. On Sept. 15, 1787, George Mason objected that because proposals depended on Congress, “no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive.” Gouverneur Morris and Elbridge Gerry moved to add the convention, and it carried without objection.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 85 that Congress “shall call a convention” and that “Nothing in this particular is left to the discretion of that body.”
After 30 years in the fiduciary world, including expert witness testimony in securities litigation, I can give you that business’s first principle: a conflicted party doesn’t rule on its own conflict. Judges recuse. Trustees wall off their own interests. Yet we ask Congress to decide whether Congress will limit itself.
Arkansas voters ran into the problem. In 1992 they adopted term limits for their congressional delegation, and in 1995 the Supreme Court struck the limits down, 5-4, in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “If the qualifications set forth in the text of the Constitution are to be changed, that text must be amended.” That sends the remedy back through the two doors, and Congress has used the first for all 27 amendments.
The states have power even before they pull the lever. Only 25 of 48 states applied for a convention on direct election of senators, yet the effort is frequently credited with prodding the Senate to propose the 17th Amendment in 1913. The Convention of States Project’s own tally shows 20 states have passed its resolution, with Kansas the latest on Jan. 22, 2026. That’s 40% of the states, and 14 short.
Members of Congress respond to what the system rewards: reelection and seniority. Asking incumbents to cap incumbency is like asking a hedge fund to cap its own fees. A few will volunteer. The rest will form a task force. Citizens can’t rewrite the incentives inside the Capitol, but they hold sway over their state legislatures, and the Constitution gives those legislatures a lever. Progressive Lawrence Lessig and conservative Michael Farris want opposite reforms and agree on which door to use.
The strongest objection is the runaway convention. No Article 5 convention has ever met, and the Congressional Research Service concedes open questions. Still, whatever a convention drafts needs 38 states to ratify it, and Michael Rappaport argues that the call defines the job. He told the Harvard audience, “The convention cannot decide to meet on its own without a call.”
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Citizens have more to do than sign petitions. State legislators can pass narrow, single-subject applications, so the call itself marks the boundary. States can also settle delegate selection by statute before any convention exists, in daylight rather than in a hotel ballroom after the gavel falls. Voters can ask their own legislators, in writing, where they stand. A voicemail is easy to delete.
Levinson sees an existential risk. I’d say any constitution is at risk when its repair depends on the consent of those it restrains. Mason saw that, and the delegates wrote a second door into Article 5. We’ve left that door shut for more than two centuries, mostly because complaining takes less effort than knocking. Congress won’t open it for us, and the design never expected it to.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.