As America Turns 250, We’re Forgetting the Declaration’s Most Fundamental Right
From J. H. Snider: Our overlooked power to change our constitutions.
America’s national and state governments collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence this July 4. Beneath the festivities ran a highly controlled, safe educational narrative. Freedom250, the White House-created organization coordinating the semiquincentennial, describes July 4, 1776, as the moment “an idea was set in motion”—an idea that defines what it means to be an American. Think tanks, museums, academic publishers, and K-12 schools have echoed this view, treating the Declaration as the nation’s sacred, unalterable creed. Yet, even as these institutions celebrate the Declaration’s ideals of equality and liberty, they ignore its most radical, structural, and essential principle.
The most famous lines of the Declaration are its opening statement of human equality and natural rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” But in the very same sentence lies a much less celebrated clause asserting that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” This principle—known in political theory as constituent power—is the right of the people to rewrite their constitution, even if it means bypassing their rulers. It is the foundation upon which all other political rights are built.
As George Washington warned in his 1796 Farewell Address, “The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government.” This was not a rhetorical flourish; it was a statement of raw institutional realism. A constitution is democratically legitimate only if the people retain the ultimate, nonviolent authority to change it.
Yet today constituent power is the Declaration’s most actively neglected principle, precisely because it poses an existential threat to those who govern. Legislatures have an inherent conflict of interest when altering the document that defines their own powers.
Our right to amend
The American founders understood this tension intimately. They designed our constitutional architecture around the premise that statutory law (ordinary rules passed by politicians) and constitutional law (higher rules governing the politicians themselves) require fundamentally different lawmaking mechanisms, including different types of public voting.
To safeguard against legislative entrenchment, the founders established three distinct types of constituent power: ratification, proposal, and initiation.
We can vote to approve or reject constitutional changes
The first, ratification power, is the authority to approve or reject proposed constitutional changes. Under the U.S. Constitution, this power belongs to the states, not Congress; under most state constitutions, it belongs directly to the people via popular referendum. But ratification alone is a weak shield. If the legislature retains monopoly control over which amendments reach the ballot, it effectively holds a gatekeeping veto over any reform that might threaten its privileges.
We can elect constitutional convention delegates to propose changes
To break this monopoly, the founders provided the second safeguard: proposal power. At the federal level, Article V allows two-thirds of the states to bypass Congress and call a constitutional convention to propose amendments. At the state level, this is achieved through independently elected constitutional conventions that bypass the state legislature. Until the early 20th century, the primary mechanism to renovate constitutions at the state level was this state constitutional convention process. Andrew McLaughlin, president of the American Historical Association, called such conventions “the greatest institution of government which America has produced.” While the federal convention mechanism has stagnated since 1787, state-level constituent conventions have been convened more than 250 times throughout American history—an average of five per state.
Article V, U.S. Constitution
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, 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; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
We can vote to hold a constitutional convention in our state, and propose amendments there
The third and most underappreciated safeguard is initiation power, which determines who can set the constitution-making process in motion. In the Declaration, this took the form of a Lockean “right of revolution”—a last resort of political violence. But early Americans quickly recognized the danger of relying on armed rebellion for constitutional renewal. Consequently, they institutionalized peaceful, legal bypass valves. The U.S. Constitution allows the states to initiate constitutional reform.
For state constitutions, fourteen states currently require periodic referendums—usually every 20 years—asking voters directly whether to call a constitutional convention; eighteen states allow citizens to place constitutional initiatives on the ballot through petition.
The ultimate check on any convention is not the delegates, but the people. A convention can only propose reforms; it cannot enact them. Every single proposal must be submitted to a statewide popular vote. To argue that the people cannot be trusted to navigate this process because they will be easily hoodwinked by special-interest ad campaigns is to attack the very premise of constitutional democracy itself.
America’s 250th anniversary should be a prime opportunity to reacquaint the public with this legacy of peaceful legislative bypass. Instead, the opportunity is being squandered. This omission is entirely rational from the perspective of political elites. Governments naturally resist teaching citizens that they possess the authority to alter the constitutional order. Elected officials prefer to cultivate a “sanctimonious reverence” (to borrow Thomas Jefferson’s words) for the Constitution, treating it as an unalterable, sacred text rather than a living instrument of popular control.
In my research, I have found that when the periodic, mandatory convention referendums do appear on state ballots, political elites and their special-interest allies have typically waged highly sophisticated, asymmetrical campaigns to destroy them. The playbook for these campaigns is remarkably consistent across time and space. It relies on a classic case of reverse-accusation politics: accusing convention advocates of their own vices. This argument is a devastatingly effective trap: it uses the public’s existing, justifiable cynicism about politics to convince them to surrender their best constitutional mechanism for fixing it.
Consider Alaska’s 2022 periodic convention referendum. Entrenched interest groups spent almost 100 times as much as supporters to defeat the measure. They flooded the airwaves with terrifying warnings that a convention would be a “playground for wealthy, out-of-state special interests” who would “rewrite the constitution to suit their own agendas.” The supreme irony, of course, was that the “no” campaign itself was funded almost entirely by millions of dollars of dark, out-of-state money channeled through front groups.
Reclaiming people power
Now is the time for us to make plans to use this forgotten power. Seven convention referendums will be on the ballot during the next four years: Michigan (2026), Connecticut (2028), Hawaii (2028), Illinois (2028), Iowa (2030), Maryland (2030), and Montana (2030).
We should go a step further in reviving constituent power by advocating for a constitutional amendment James Madison proposed on June 8, 1789, as the first of the package of amendments that would eventually become the U.S. Bill of Rights (the bold words are my addition):
“That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; and that Government is instituted for their benefit, and they have at all times an unalienable and indefeasible right, including initiation, proposal, and ratification power, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as they may think proper.”
Our democracy is under immense strain, and many of our most persistent failures are structural. We cannot expect a self-interested legislature to propose the independent redistricting commissions, ethics reforms, or electoral changes required to fix our broken institutions. If this semiquincentennial is to be more than a superficial, taxpayer-funded spectacle on a White House lawn, we must remind Americans of their most fundamental right. They are not merely subjects of a constitutional order. They are its authors—and authors always retain the right to revise their work.
J.H. Snider is the author of Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding (Routledge, 2026) and editor of The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse.