Talk:Article Seven of the United States Constitution/Archive 1

"Illegal adoption"
The text in the following section was added to the article United States Constitution. I moved it from that page to this page because it was only peripherally relevant to the original article, and, in any event, was far too detailed for the general subject of the "United States Constitution". Another user then removed it from this page, saying the section was about the constitution as a whole. I think that while the text of the section discusses the constitution in general, it is specifically related to the topic of ratification. I think this material should be incorporated into this article. &mdash; Mateo SA | talk July 9, 2005 18:51 (UTC)

Was the Constitution illegally adopted?
One historical controversy is whether or not the Constitution was illegally adopted. For example, historian Joseph Ellis in Founding Brothers charges that there is truth in the allegations that the:
 * 1) "Convention was extralegal, since its explicit mandate was to revise the Articles of Confederation, not replace them."
 * 2) "Machinery for ratification did not require the unanimous consent dictated by the Articles [of Confederation] themselves."

Constitutional lawyer Michael P. Farris disagrees, arguing that:
 * 1) "No limits were places on the authority of the convention to make amendments." It did present its results as a new document, but that  merely describes the format of its proposed amendment, and is not substantial.  Many matters in the Articles and the Constitution were the same (e.g., the name of the nation, that states retained all undelegated power, mutual defense, and state citizenship was granted upon movement).  The name of the document was changed, but "it is a recognized legal principle that the title of a law is not part of the body of the law" (and thus has no legal consequence).
 * 2) "Congress and all thirteen state legislatures approved the new ratification process as required by the Articles."  The U.S. Constitution proposed a new ratification process, using state conventions (not legislatures) and requiring only 9 of 13 approvals.  However, this new ratification process was approved using the approval process required by the Articles of Confederation.  The Articles required Congress to approve a change, and then gain agreement by all state legislatures.  Congress unanimously approved of the Constutition, and sent the proposal (including its proposed change for final ratification) to the states legislatures. Eleven states held ratification conventions and approved the Constitution by July 26, 1788; since these conventions were approved by the legislatures, these legislaturs did directly approve of the change in procedure.  North Carolina's legislature authorized the election of delegates for this purpose; while the delegates voted against it, the legislature had "previously approved the change in the process." In February 1788, Rhode Island's legislature "adopted a resolution submitting the the (Constitution) to a vote of all the people in the state. In effect, (appointing) all the people of the state (to the convention)."  The Constitution was rejected in Rhode Island in this vote, but that "does not detract from the fact that the Rhode Island legislature approved the process." In short, since the Congress approved the process unanimously, and all legislatures accepted the process by creating convention processes, the requirements of the Articles were fulfilled.

At this point such arguments are moot. The Constitution states that its authority derives from the people (its text begins with "We the people of the United States of America"), and having been accepted, it is the supreme law of the United States of America.


 * I'm the user who reverted this move on this page. (I also reverted the move on United States Constitution, but Wikipedia suffered one of its periodic hiccups and returned a preview page instead of saving it, and I didn't notice and until just recently.)  The basic argument was given by the edit summary:  although part of this section discusses the ratification process, certainly the whole section does not, and thus it does not appear to be about Article 7, but about the Constitution as a whole document. &mdash; DLJessup 21:10, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Cool article
Just to say, cool article. Casts interesting parallels with EU at the moment. --57.66.51.165 15:26, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Dating sentence
Is the sentence which states when the Constitution was passed by the Constitutional Convention actually part of Article VII? The delegates weren't merely passing Article VII; they were passing the entire Constitution. Some copies of the Constitution include that sentence as part of Article VII, and some treat it as independent of Article VII. Is there any way to confirm whether that sentence is part of Article VII. SMP0328. (talk) 19:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Presupposing the establishment of Article VII before the establishment of the Constitution
The beginning of the article reads that "Article Seven of the United States Constitution provides how many state ratifications were necessary in order for the Constitution to take effect and how a state could ratify it."

An unratified article in the unratified constitution provided criteria to be used to determine whether or not the constitution had been ratified?? Well, that must have been convenient way back in late 1787. After all, the Constitution needed to be established, and you can't have that without ratification. So, why not put the unratified criteria into the unratified constitution? That way, everyone, even the semi-literate, can find them easily when some skeptic asks about ratification.

Of course, you shouldn't need to be a professional philosopher to recognize a problem with doing so. To accept Article VII as a source of criteria to determine if the Constitution has been ratified requires that you presuppose the establishment of what one finds in Article VII. Once nine states' conventions have clucked their approval, you use the presupposition to argue that the requirement has been satisfied.

So, the first paragraph is misleading. A7 "provides", at most, an unsubstantiated claim. In fact, it has nothing to say about the powers government may exercise upon establishment, assuming that such a thing is possible. So there was no reason to have included A7. The Wikipedia article about A7 would be better if it began something like this:


 * Article Seven of the United States Constitution asserts that nine states' conventions must favor ratification in order for the Constitution to be established.

Or like this:


 * Article Seven of the United States Constitution purports to provide criteria to determine if the Constitution has been ratified, and it's claimed there that ratification is sufficient for establishment of the Constitution. 216.80.1.6 (talk) 21:16, 4 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Article VII is an example of bootstrapping. However, the ship has long since sailed on this issue. Article VII is accepted as providing how and when the U.S. Constitution became effective. SMP0328. (talk) 01:43, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

SMP0328, the fact that A7 "is accepted", whatever that means, is not a statement about the nature of A7 but about the thoughts and attitudes (prejudices, really) of some people. So your remark belongs in a different article, e.g. Popular Thoughts About Article VII of the United States Constitution. I doubt, however, that more than a few of the people to whom you've referred could give so much as a synopsis of A7 without first reading it or being coached, even if their lives depended upon doing so. Furthermore, you suggest that the popularity of a claim can make true that claim, i.e. that "Article Seven of the United States Constitution provides how many state ratifications were necessary...". Yet the article as it stands cites not one single scrap of evidence to support the claim, and it never will, your bootstrapping fallacy notwithstanding. A7 provides a mere opinion of a few politicians, all of them long since dead, although I'm confident that those politicians understood the utility of A7 to accomplishing their goals. 50.194.104.82 (talk) 13:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * If Article VII is not valid, then the Constitution is not valid. Obviously, I'm sure you are not suggesting that and so "the ship has long since sailed" regarding Article VII's legitimacy. SMP0328. (talk) 18:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

"The Constitution was ratified by the states in the following order"
No source is cited for the claims made in the table, and there's no link to another article with sources. 50.194.104.82 (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * A source has been added. It looks like the External links section provided a source. The source I've added is a pinpoint cite within that earlier source. SMP0328. (talk) 19:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The reference that you added has no bearing on the contents of the table, but is, instead, a good source for the text of A7. Probably you didn't even read the "pinpoint cite". So I will delete the citation number that follows "...in the following order:", just above the table, and add one for the text of A7.


 * 50.194.104.82 (talk) 17:26, 22 October 2012 (UTC)