Delaware
“[T]he General Assembly of the State of Delaware hereby, and pursuant to Article V of the Constitution of the United States, makes application to the Congress of the United States to call a convention for the proposing of the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States . . . The costs of operating the Federal Government shall not exceed its income during any fiscal year, except in the event of declared war. [This] constitutes a continuing application . . . until at least two-thirds of the legislatures of the several states have made similar applications[.]” – Delaware HCR 36 (1975)
Representative Application
For each of the 40 States, one representative application has been highlighted. An explanation is provided as to why this application should be aggregated toward the total calling for a convention for proposing amendments. Additional applications from the State, if any, are also included.
Delaware HCR 36 (1975) is among three states whose applications include specifically worded amendment language without specifying that they are to be counted together with substantially similar applications. In the absence of this language, scholars disagree as to whether the specifically worded language should be read as an example to better articulate the problem or a restriction. None of these three are necessary to reach the threshold of two-thirds of the states. The declaratory judgment action can succeed without them. Delaware includes very simple amendment language whose entirety is also a statement of the problem: “The costs of operating the Federal Government shall not exceed its income during any fiscal year, except in the event of declared war.” Delaware then includes a long explanation of their intent that can be dense and easy to parse incorrectly. Delaware says that it believes that if 2/3 of the states propose identically worded amendments, then the Convention would be restricted to text only. This is a minority view among scholars, most of whom believe that states have the power to set the agenda of a convention, but not to remove all deliberative process. However, Delaware does not say that they intend their application to only be counted in the event that 2/3 of the states propose the same text, only that they believe that if it happened to be true that 2/3 of the states did that, it would bind the convention to that text. As it happens, no other state included the same text as Delaware and so their resolution does not say the convention should be bound to the text they provided. It is therefore a fair reading that they intended their resolution to count with others for a similar purpose.
HCR 36 (1975)
APPLYING TO THE CONGRESS FOR A CONVENTION TO PROPOSE AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the 128th General Assembly, the Senate concurring therein, that the General Assembly of the State of Delaware hereby, and pursuant to Article V of the Constitution of the United States, makes application to the Congress of the United States to call a convention for the proposing of the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
“ARTICLE______
The costs of operating the Federal Government shall not exceed its income during any fiscal year, except in the event of declared war.”
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this application by the General Assembly of the State of Delaware constitutes a continuing application in accordance with Article V of the Constitution of the United States until at least two-thirds of the legislatures of the several states have made similar applications pursuant to Article V.
BE IT YET FURTHER RESOLVED that since this method of proposing amendments to the Constitution has never been completed to the point of calling a convention and no interpretation of the power of the states in the exercise of this right has ever been made by any court or any qualified tribunal, if there be such, and since the exercise of the power is a matter of basic sovereign rights and the interpretation thereof is primarily in the sovereign government making such exercise and since the power to use such right in full also carries the power to use such right in part, the General Assembly of the State of Delaware interprets Article V to mean that if two-thirds of the states make application for a convention to propose an identical amendment to the Constitution for ratification with a limitation that such amendment be the only matter before it, that such convention would have power only to propose the specified amendment and would be limited to such proposal and would not have power to vary the text thereof nor would it have power to propose other amendments on the same or different propositions.
BE IT YET FURTHER RESOLVED that a duly attested copy of this resolution be immediately transmitted to the Secretary of the Senate of the United States, the Clerk of the House of Representatives of the United States, to each member of the Congress from this State and to each House of each State Legislature in the United States.
SIGNED BY THE GOVERNOR
Jun 23 1975