Episode Details

A single throwaway line can fuel a massive myth, especially when it touches the Constitution. We’re joined by Mark Meckler to clean up confusion around the “runaway convention” claim and to put real history back on the table, starting with what the 1787 delegates were actually authorized to do and why it matters for today’s Article V debates.

We talk through original delegate commissions, the honor culture of the Founding era, and why blaming the framers for a supposed “rogue” convention doesn’t fit the evidence. Mark also connects the dots from the Annapolis Convention to the Constitutional Convention, showing how scope and authority were treated seriously and how limits worked in practice. If you care about constitutional history, this is a deep dive into the receipts, not the rumors.

Then we shift to the modern Convention of States question: can an Article V convention be limited to specific topics? We unpack the legal concept of aggregation, why state applications must match to count toward the two-thirds requirement, and what Department of Justice opinions (including work associated with Ed Meese’s DOJ) and scholarship like Mike Farris’s Harvard Law Review writing say about a limited call. We also walk through what happens if someone tries to introduce an out-of-scope amendment, and why the 38-state ratification requirement is the final, unavoidable backstop.

If this conversation challenges what you’ve heard about a constitutional convention, share it with a friend who cares about the Constitution, subscribe so you don’t miss the follow-up, and leave a review telling us the biggest myth you want to see tested next.

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