What happens if the slavery one gets ratified? Does it invalidate the 13th? Does the 13th invalidate it? Does it become a constitutional crisis and we duke it out to figure out which one wins?
* Does an amendment to the Constitution have the power to prevent amendments to the Constitution? If so, do later amendments have the ability to overturn this limitation of power?
* Would the amendment actually have any effect, since the 13th amendment was enacted before the Corwin Amendment? That is, is the amendment implicitly retroactive?
* Is it possible for states to rescind their ratification? For that matter, can Congress rescind its ratification?
* For bonus points, try to figure out what the rules are for the Article V convention to amend the Constitution, in particular in deciding whether or not we are supposed to be having one right now.
Ultimately, as we have seen countless times including now, in China, and 2 years back in Turkey, might is right and any constitution can be amended arbitrarily under the right circumstances by the right people with the right power and control over armies.
1.
Article Five of the US Constitution specifies the manner in which the constitution can be amended. It expressly prohibits any amendment that would deprives a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate. Therefore, the Constitution itself prevents certain amendments to the Constitution. It stands to reason that, should you wish to change the Senate away from an equal number of Senators per state, you would need two amendments. One to allow such an amendment and then a second which would itself be that amendment.
That the Constitution provides a process for amendment is proof that its framers intended for it to be amended. That they specifically laid out certain things which could not be amended indicate that they intended for it to be possible to amend anything and everything else. That the amendment procedure was itself not included in the list of unamendable things includes it in the list of amendable things. Therefore the list of unamendable things is in the scope of amendments as something which may be amended.
Of course, later amendments may repeal earlier amendments.
2.
If a state ratified two conflicting amendments - A and B - I would say that the latter of the two ratifications would take precedence. Now, if Congress passed A first and then B, and B was ratified by enough states first and then A was ratified by enough states, I would say that you would have a nice little Constitutional crisis on your hands.
I think the rational solution would be to follow the Convention process for amendments as laid out in Article 5. That way the states can sort it out definitively, federal Congress be damned.
3.
No.
4.
Since I mention it earlier as a way to solve the conflicts between the 13th and Corwin amendments, the plain reading of the text suggests that each state legislature applies to hold a constitutional convention. The natural body to collect and manage these applications is Congress itself. When Congress has 2/3 of the States applying for such a convention they will determine the process for the convention.
This makes no sense to me but is pretty common thinking. It's crazy that we expect the original authors of the Constitution to have considered every possibility exhaustively.
To put the idea in a different context, if I fail to blacklist a particular string in my webapp, does that mean I intended to let it through? Or could it be possible that, through negligence, a lack of research, or some other reason, that the string was omitted in error?
So, back to the real issue: The Constitution specifies the process that we have. "They didn't think of this" != "we don't have to follow what it says".
> No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
What the Corwin Amendment does, then, is ban further amendments that would abolish slavery. But since the prohibition against slavery is now already part of the constituion, it would, AFAICT, not be affected by the hypothetical ratification of the Corwin Amendment.
I'm not sure it even does that. Reading the passage you quoted, it seems like it only bars amendments that give Congress the power to interfere with state slavery laws. But the amendment that freed the slaves didn't give Congress that power, it just freed the slaves itself. It sounds like The Corwin Amendment only covers attempts to abolish slavery that wouldn't go through the process of ratification by the states.
And before the Civil War, that understanding might well have held in both the North and the South. Indeed northern states often thumbed their noses at the federal fugitive slave laws -- including the Constitution.
By the time of the war though, the political state of play was that state sovereignty and the abolition of slavery were at loggerheads -- and abolishing slavery was far more important.
A better example might be the 17th amendment, which changes the way that US senators are elected as described in Article I.
It's my opinion that if there was a new amendment that would be in direct conflict with the other amendments without expressly repealing them the conflicting amendment it would be a constitutional crisis and it would cause political instability.
It would be, at the very least, go to the Supreme Court.
Where I imagine you could get a crisis is if an amendment passes and then some (powerful) people then say "oh by the by -- did you notice that it implicitly limits X part of the bill of rights".
Still this is not very likely. Not because people in the US don't want to wind back fundamental rights. But because they have easier ways of doing it than passing amendments -- even sly ones.