I get a lot of compliments on my Constitution swag. I have a Constitution necklace, bracelet, scarf, shoes with both the Constitution and Declaration hand-painted on them, multiple totes, and a variety of Constitution t-shirts.

Why do I love to wear what I teach? It gets attention.

When I wear my “I ❤ The Constitution” t-shirt to the grocery store or out to lunch or dinner, I’m always surprised by the number of people who come up to me to say “Me too!” or “That’s awesome!”. Never one to waste an opportunity to promote constitutional literacy, I usually share my card and invite these folks to visit http://www.ConSource.org (my non-profit’s website) to learn more about the Constitution and our nation’s history.

Here are some of my favorite places to buy Constitution Swag online:

(1) Etsy

(2) The Constitution Store (yes, this exists and is run by the US Capitol Historical Society)

(3) The National Archives Store Online

I also recommend checking out the gift shops at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, and the Newseum in Washington, DC. I usually pick up fun Constitution-themed gear and gifts whenever I visit either museum.

This week in Williamsburg, Va, Citizens for Self-Government is hosting a simulated Convention of the States to propose amendments to the Constitution under Article V of the Constitution. Their mission is –

[T]o urge and empower state legislators to call a convention of states. The delegates at such a convention would have the power to propose amendments to the Constitution that would curb the abuses of the federal government. Article V of the Constitution gives them this power; the COS Project will give them an avenue through which they can use it.

Article V of the Constitution includes a provision that “on application of two-thirds of the several States,” Congress “shall call a convention for proposing Amendments.”

Supporters of Article V conventions have mounted vigorous (and yet unsuccessful) campaigns in the past (reaching a peak of interest in the 1960s through the early 1980s) on a range of issues including: restrictions on abortion, apportionment of state legislatures, and a federal balanced budget. None of these campaigns attained the necessary applications from two-thirds of the states. Indeed, we have never adopted a Constitutional amendment using an Article V convention. All 27 of the Constitution’s amendments adopted since 1787 came from Congress and not from applications of the states (Article V provides that whenever two-thirds of both Houses of Congress “shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to [the] Constitution.”)

In recent years, in response to congressional deadlock, there has been a renewed interest in Article V conventions from groups across the political spectrum. Groups on the right like Citizens for Self-Government are interested in the balanced budget requirement and restrictions on federal governmental authority. On the left, there is an interest in calling an Article V convention to repeal the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen United.

So why haven’t Article V conventions worked in the past?

The main reason is the Constitution’s requirement that a super-majority of two-thirds of the state legislatures must apply for an Article V Convention.

But there’s a reason for this stringent requirement, as James Madison discussed in The Federalist No. 43.

“It guards equally against that extreme facility which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty which might perpetuate its discovered faults.”

What happens after Amendments are proposed?

Article V reads in relevant part that “Amendments . . . in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”

What this mean is that amendments proposed by either Congress or an Article V Convention must be ratified by the legislatures or special conventions in three-fourths of the states (38 total today). Furthermore, Congress has the authority to choose the method of ratification in the states. The options are ratification by state conventions called specifically for considering ratification of amendments, or ratification by the legislatures of the states. In either case, the three-fourths requirement applies.

Congress has only specified ratification by convention for the 21^st amendment, which repealed the 18^th Amendment (prohibition).

Why Might Calls for an Article V Convention Be a Good Thing?

One would think that the three-fourths requirement for ratification would quiet fears of a runaway convention, but many people still raise this as a major concern. It’s a concern that, admittedly, I share with many others.

But there might be some good to come out of the current interest in Article V conventions, even if they are ultimately unsuccessful –

It could generate genuine public and, perhaps, even congressional interest in the constitutional issues being discussed. Even a failed effort might motivate many Americans to think about the Constitution.

Plus, Article V simulations, like the one underway in Williamsburg, Va., this week, are an excellent opportunity to teach our nation’s citizens about the Constitution and constitutional change.

Garrett Epps  wrote a piece in The Atlantic on Tuesday titled “Trumpism is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution.”

In this piece Epps argues that

Trumpism is the symptom, not the cause, of the malaise. I think we have for some time been living in the post-Constitution era. America’s fundamental law remains and will remain important as a source of litigation. But the nation seems to have turned away from a search of values in the Constitution, regarding it instead as a set of annoying rules.

He goes on to argue that Donald Trump and his supporters are “openly contemptuous of the nation’s founding document, of its Bill of Rights, and of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.”

Epps’ piece reminds of a warning issued by James Monroe, our nation’s fifth president, in his first Inaugural Address –

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

A variety of surveys and studies in recent years confirm that Americans lack a basic understanding of the United States Constitution and system of government. The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found in their annual Constitution Day survey that only a quarter of Americans can name all three branches of government, the poorest showing on that question in a half-dozen years. They also found that nearly a third of Americans cannot name any of the three branches of government. Last year, the APPC survey found that about one in 10 Americans (12 percent) says the Bill of Rights includes the right to own a pet. (For the record – it does not!)

A study by the Center for Civic Education and Professor Diana Owen of Georgetown University found that 86% of respondents are aware that they are not well-informed regarding our nation’s foundational documents.

As Monroe said in his first inaugural address and many of our Founding Fathers confirmed in much of their writings, the cure for an “ill Constitution” is education!

In 1785, John Jay wrote,  “I consider knowledge to be the soul of a republic[.]” Years earlier, John Adams in his Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law remarked that “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” In his second annual message to Congress, then-President James Madison stated “It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

In one of his most famous quotes, Thomas Jefferson stated: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

High quality life-long civics education is essential for the continued health of the American republic. It helps ensure that Americans of all ages, in the words of Noah Webster, value “the principles of virtue and liberty,” and that we “inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.”

Regardless of whether you agree with Epps’ argument about Trumpism or instead believe that its Clintonism that represents the symptom of an ill Constitution, the stats and rhetoric in 2016 are clear, we need to reinvigorate our nation’s commitment to civics education. Education is and has always been the cure for what ails our Republic.