No generation gets to bind the next forever. Every hundred years, this Constitution must face a Convention of the people — un-skippable, un-defundable, un-delayable. Its delegates are chosen by lot and by publicly financed election, never by money or by holding office. It may propose anything except this: it can never take a right away.
A constitution written in 1787 governed a country its authors could not have imagined — and the only way to change it ran through the very people it had made powerful.Check it
The amendment path was so difficult that it effectively closed. Faction learned it only had to block, and blocking was easy.Check it
The other route — a constitutional convention — was so unbounded that nobody dared call one, for fear it would run away and rewrite everything.Check it
So the document calcified. Not because the people consented to it, but because they had no reachable way to revisit it.Check it
Every hundredth year, a Convention of Review must convene. No official, chamber, court, or state may delay, defund, or obstruct it — and any citizen can go to federal court to compel it.
Delegates are apportioned by population and chosen two ways: at least a third by lot from among ordinary citizens, and at least a third by publicly financed nonpartisan election. No seat can be bought, and no seat comes with an office.
Sitting officials cannot be delegates. Proceedings are public. The selection is run independently and audited.
And the firewall: the Convention may expand rights, but it can never repeal or diminish one. It proposes; it does not enact — ratification still belongs to the people.
Constitutional review depended on the will of the people in power — which meant it happened when it suited them, and otherwise never.Check it
It convenes in the hundredth year and every hundredth year after, on a schedule fixed by law and run by the independent election authority. If any body fails to act, the authority performs the step itself — and any citizen has standing to compel it in federal court. It cannot be skipped.
Any convention would have been filled by the same officeholders, parties, and donors who benefit from the arrangement being reviewed.Check it
A capture-resistant hybrid: at least one-third selected by lot from among the citizens, and at least one-third by publicly financed nonpartisan election. Apportioned by population like the House — so the Convention reflects the people, not the states as units, and not the parties.
Money shaped who could run for anything — so money would have shaped who wrote the next constitution.Check it
No purchased seats and no seats conferred by office. Sitting officials are barred from serving as delegates. The people reviewing the government cannot be the government.
The fear that a convention could rewrite anything — including the Bill of Rights — is precisely why no one ever risked calling one.Check it
The limits bind the Convention itself. It may expand rights; it may never repeal or diminish them. The abolition of slavery, equal protection, and the human-only nature of rights are entrenched beyond its reach. The fear that kept the door shut is answered, so the door can finally open.
A convention was imagined as a body that could impose a new order by its own authority.Check it
The Convention proposes; it does not enact. Anything it sends forward still requires ratification — three-quarters for ordinary change, four-fifths where rights are concerned. The people keep the last word, always.
The original Convention met in secret, with the windows nailed shut.Check it
Proceedings are public and the selection is independently administered and auditable. A country reviewing its own founding document does it where the country can watch.
A review that proposed nothing would have been called a failure and a waste.Check it
A Convention that proposes nothing is written into the law as a success, not a failure. It means a generation looked hard at the document and chose to keep it — which is renewal, not inertia. Consent has to be given again to remain consent.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-40, which implements Article One, Section 3 of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
