Wednesday, February 09, 2022

I'm Just Not Seeing Any Lack of Clarity Here

This is the entire text of Article V of the US Constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

The Equal Rights Amendment has been proposed by two thirds of both Houses of Congress.

The Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified by three fourths of the states.

QED, the Equal Rights Amendment is valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution.

Three Republican members of the US Senate are "urging" the national archivist to continue pretending that it isn't, because they fantasize that Congress has the power to set a time period for ratification of amendments  and that states have the power to rescind their ratifications.

But as you can see above, neither Congress nor the states have any such power.

The latter is an especially good thing, else there would probably be more than a quarter of state legislatures who were willing to rescind, for example, their ratifications of the Second Amendment.

What, I wonder, would these three Republicans think of the national archivist -- an official mentioned neither in Article V nor anywhere else in the Constitution -- declining to "certify" a bill duly passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a president until some frivolous legal arguments against the plain, clear, and unambiguous language of the Constitution on passage of legislation were settled?

The ERA is part of the Constitution. The only way to remove it from the Constitution is for two thirds of both houses of Congress to propose, and three quarters of the state legislatures to ratify, yet another amendment repealing it.

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