States In U.S. Want Some Of Their Power Back

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 22

States In U.S. Want Some Of Their Power Back

YFrom FRANK OLIVIR, •pecial correspondent N-Z.P-AJ WASHINGTON, Mar. 30. One of the really great constitutional battles is beginning to build up in the United States although so far the fanfare has been somewhat muted. The separate states, 50 of them, appear to be near success in calling for a constitutional convention at which they hope to win back to themselves some of the powers and influence they they have been losing to the central Government over a considerable period of time. Power, the states argue (or most of them do), is becoming too centralised, the central Government too big and too powerful, “states’ rights" are being whittled away and a number of the states want them returned to the state legislatures. Convention Wanted What is going on is an organised effort to force the Congress to call a constitutional convention. If two more states join in the move, then Congress will have to decide whether the move of the states is a legitimate compliance with the Constitution’s alternative method of proposing amendments to the Constitution.

„ The whole idea is to limit the power of the Congress in the matter of amendments and Congress will be in the position of deciding whether that body itself should be limited in this respect. The system that has been In force is for amendments

to the Constitution to get their start in Congress. If passed by a two-thirds vote in both chambers, the amendments

are passed on to the states and they become part of the Constitution when ratified by two-thirds of the states. Hating Amendments

The idea of the states initiating the move tar a constitutional convention is that they, the states, should initiate the business of making amendments. This is no new squabble. It bedevilled for weeks the Constitutional convention which met in Philadelphia in 1787 but which finally achieved that revered document—the Constitution of the United States.

Catherine Drinker Bowen, a noted historian, recently entitled her book on that convention, “Miracle at Philadelphia,” and no-one would quarrel with that description of what the convention achieved.

Now, 180 years later, many of the states want another such convention, not to change the main body of the great document but to adopt a series of amendments which could be affixed to the Constitution by a three-fourths

vote of the 50 states. Congress having no say in the matter whatsoever. By this means not only the power of Congress but the power of the White House and the power of the Supreme Court could be clipped, anywhere from slightly to severely, by the state legislatures.

If the move of the states is successful, it could result in a political and constitutional revolution of important and enormous proportions. Some of the things that

have given rise to the movement are perfectly clear. For the states, or most of them, ti Supreme Court is Peck’s bad boy. First it told the Southern states they must desegregate and then it told all states they must reapportion their legislative districts on a one-man one-vote basis. Some writers on the conservative side (and all conservatives adhere to the belief that the centralisation of power in Washington is both bad and dangerous, liberals, of course, think exactly the other way) talk of the move as a “rebellion” by the states against the Supreme Court and the whole power structure in Washington. Among experts in constitutional matters there is argument now as to whether the Congress has discretion in the matter, whether it is bound to call a Constitutional convention on application by two-thirds of the states or whether it can reject such application. If it does reject it when it comes (and most observers here think it will) then the matter could be carried to the Supreme Court with the request that the Court intervene. Some hold the view that Congress might give a little in order to retain a lot—reappointment is the big issue. The Court says both houses of each state legislature should be reapportioned on the one-man one-vote basis. A move is underway in the Senate and House in Washing-

ton to limit such reapportionment to one chamber, leaving the states to apportion their senates on any basis they choose.

Some hold the belief that if Congress gives way to this extent then the call for a Constitutional convention might be dropped by the states. For two years Senator Everett Dirksen has unsuccessfully tried to get such a change in the reapportionment law and there seems little hope of him being successful this year. If the Congress stands firm and by some means or other a Constitutional convention is called it could, of course, make for a complete shift of power from the Federal Government back to the states, for there are no limitations on the questions such a convention could consider. The “New York Times” calls the drive for such a convention “wrong in its purpose and dangerous in its method.” It adds that calling a convention is a proper and constitutional procedure but warns that if it took place “there would be no way to confine it to the reapportionment question. It could go on to change the Bill of Rights or drastically alter other provisions of the Constitution.”

The paper believes that at best such a convention could be mischievous and at worst reckless and if it tried to rewrite the Constitution plunge the nation into a distracting controversy.

The “Washington Post” tells the states they should stop the move and “halt this potentially perilous venture” and adds “... the states ought not to put themselves in the posture of trying to tear the union to pieces . . . the proposed remedy (of the reapportionment decision) is 10 times worse than the disease.” The same paper’s cartoonist depicts a clownish Dirksen about to put a time bomb under the Supreme Court. The bomb is labelled “one constitutional convention—one constitutional shambles” and the Senator saying to a bystander, “it’s my answer to one-man onevote.”