Madison Amendment Exposed

The Madison Amendment was adopted by ALEC's Federal Relations Working Group on August 5, 2010, approved by the ALEC Board of Directors on September 19, 2010. A nearly identical version of the Madison Amendment is available on ALEC.org, language added to the original is listed below in bold. (Accessed on 8/25/2015).

ALEC Bill Text

Summary

Without making any change to the structure of the Constitution of the United States of America, the Madison Amendment guarantees that states have the power to limit the scope of an Article V Convention to just a single amendment. The Madison Amendment eliminates the risk of an inadvertent ”runaway” Constitutional Convention and ensures that states have, as the Constitution’s authors intended, the same power as Congress to propose a single Amendment to the Constitution.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States allowing the States to call a limited convention solely for the purposes of considering whether to propose a specific amendment to the Constitution.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

Article – the Congress, on application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, which all contain an identical amendment, shall call a convention solely to decide whether to propose that specific amendment to the states, which, if proposed shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution when ratified pursuant to Article V.

Adopted by the Federal Relations Working Group, August 5, 2010.

Approved by the ALEC Board of Directors, September 19, 2010.