The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It

A former U.S. senator joins a legal scholar to examine a hushed effort  to radically change our Constitution, offering a warning and a way  forward.

Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a  convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's  first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in  Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited  authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering  anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign  policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and  for some, great power.

In this important book, Feingold and  Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine  the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role  of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on  judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds  with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make  constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection  of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of  constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American  democracy is, and should be.