 constitutional crisis caused by the unceasing and increasingly dangerous expansion of federal power. Article V as it currently exists gives states the ability to threaten the status quo with a fundamental decentralization of power. If used effectively, that threat at the very least would force Congress to look in its rear view mirror and hesitate before exceeding constitutional limits.
Fortunately, there is no reason to view Rappaport’s “state drafting reform” idea as necessarily incompatible with concurrently building a more substantive Article V movement. Not only would the same social and political networks naturally be leveraged for both efforts, the investment of time and effort in organizing and promoting the “state drafting reform” is precisely the kind of collective effort that must be made to persuade and organize states to use their existing Article V power substantively. The concurrency of both efforts could even inspire the formation of the previously described interstate compact. But for such synergies to be preserved, it is absolutely critical that any “state drafting reform” be presented as a means of streamlining and enhancing the power of states to achieve constitutional reform. It must not appease or legitimize unreasonable fear of a runaway convention.