George Washington presided at the first and only Constitutional Convention, convened in Philadelphia in 1787 with Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and other statesmen in attendance.

Flash forward more than two centuries and imagine the delegates’ seats filled by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma and State Sen. Travis Holdman. Sound like a stretch?

Not if those calling for another constitutional convention have their way. Their objective is approval of an amendment giving states the authority to repeal any federal law or regulation.

That amendment, introduced in the U.S. House in September, has no chance of approval in Congress, which is responsible for those federal laws and regulations under attack. Two thirds of the House and the Senate have to approve it, then send it to state legislatures for approval by three fourths of them.

But the Constitution offers a second method for starting the amendment process. It allows two-thirds of the states to submit petitions calling for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.

If similar measures are approved in at least 33 other states, the Constitution could be opened for review and revision in a process never before used, one that constitutional scholars acknowledge would give unprecedented power to smaller states.

Two proposed pieces of state legislation would call for such a convention:

•One is a joint resolution sponsored by Holdman, a Markle Republican, in the Indiana Senate and by Rep. Cindy Noe, R-Indianapolis, in the House. It is the broader of the two approaches.

•Indiana’s House speaker is supporting House Joint Resolution 9, which he describes as the more focused approach of the so-called Repeal Amendment.

Bosma, an Indianapolis Republican, said Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell asked him last September to review materials making the case for the amendment.

“I looked through them and became very intrigued by the prospect of returning the balance of power between federal and state government without a complete rewrite of the Constitution or the undoing of generations of judicial opinions,” he said. “I’ve had a concern for the last decade that powers reserved (for the states) have been gobbled up by a well-intentioned government, seemingly within the reach of every part of our lives.”

In addition to the Indiana House speaker, the tea party-driven Repeal Amendment has attracted the support of Cantor and of high-ranking Republican legislative leaders in Virginia, Florida, Texas and eight other states, as well as several state attorneys general.

Supporters, including Bosma, say there’s no single federal law driving their efforts, but the Affordable Care Act – or Obamacare, in detractors’ terms – clearly is one impetus.

Hoosier efforts

Republican lawmakers are jumping into the amendment fray with enthusiasm. HJR 7, sponsored by Reps. Robert Behning and David Frizzell, is another tea party-powered initiative calling for a constitutional convention not to amend the constitution, but to repeal another amendment – the 17th, which provided for direct election of U.S. senators instead of by state legislatures. Repeal proponents argue that Congress has become a pawn of special interests, precisely the charge made of state legislatures when the 17th Amendment was approved in 1913.

Virginia Sloan, founder and president of the Washington-based Constitution Project, has been cautiously watching amendment attempts for more than a decade, working with some of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars. She said the Repeal Amendment supporters have it all wrong.

“The framers contemplated that there would be a federal government and there would be state governments,” Sloan said. “This Repeal Amendment has it backwards. In a way, it’s saying that no matter what the federal government does, the states can overrule it. It really eliminates the federal government.”

She noted that the result of the Repeal Amendment could be to give the 34 smallest states power over the more populous states if two-thirds of the states agree to repeal a federal law.

“What you have is minority rule, rather than majority rule,” Sloan said. “And we would have a crazy quilt of laws if the states were to start repealing what the federal government does. It takes away the power of the federal government to do what it was intended to do.”

Amendment process

Efforts to amend the Constitution aren’t new, but they continue to intrigue those whose work is devoted to studying history, the Constitution and law. Their advice to Cantor, Bosma and other would-be revisionists? Good luck. The Constitution has been amended just 27 times in the past 223 years.

Michael Grossberg, professor of history and professor of law at Indiana University-Bloomington, said delegates to the 1787 convention were clearly seeking a more powerful federal government than existed under their government at the time, the Articles of Confederation.

“They believed very firmly in a government that could be checked in balance, which is why revenue bills must come from the House, why the Senate has the right to approve treaties, why the president has veto power and that, in 1802, judicial review was established,” he said. “It seems to me that what they did is – rather than say this is what the powers of the national government should be – they set up a structure for each generation to ask what those powers should be.”

Grossberg said the delegates – men who had been instrumental in writing the constitutions of their own states – recognized that the document they were creating was not perfect, so they established Article V to allow for its revision. But in doing so, they made the amendment process intentionally difficult.

“The reality is that it is very, very hard to change it,” he said. “In every session of Congress there are hundreds of amendments proposed. They never get anywhere. … What happens is that people sort of venerate the document. While they may agree that something needs to be done, they hesitate changing the Constitution because it’s such an important document.”

Gerard Magliocca, professor of law at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, said the Article V process allowing two-thirds of the states to convene a constitutional convention is a deterrent in itself.

“Everybody is terrified of the actual prospect (of a convention),” he said, because the uncharted process could allow for anything. “Once you have a convention, ‘We the People’ have come to life … you really can’t limit what they propose.”

What happens instead is that Congress steps in, according to Magliocca. The 17th Amendment is such an example – a populist movement around 1900 was pushing for a convention, so Congress itself proposed the amendment involving the election of senators.

He cited the Gramm-Rudman Act as a more recent example.

“It took the wind out of the sails of the people wanting a convention to pass a balanced budget amendment,” he said.

But even the amendment process initiated by Congress is cautiously used. Aside from the Bill of Rights, it’s been done just 17 times. The 27th Amendment, which delays congressional salary changes until a newly elected session, is the most recent. It was ratified in 1992 – 202 years after it was first submitted.

Conservatives might be behind the current push to revise the nation’s most sacred document, but there have been liberal efforts as well.

It was Democrats concerned for the influence of campaign contributions who pushed for an amendment addressing campaign finance.

The Constitution Project in 1999 assembled a bipartisan commission to establish guidelines for amending the constitution.

Sloan said that some former members of Congress who participated had themselves proposed amendments while in office.

“When we were finished,” according to Sloan, “they said the process made them believe they should have sought other methods than an amendment. The lesson is to not be cavalier about the Constitution.”

But Sloan, Grossberg and Magliocca agree that events prompting Americans to examine the Constitution are invaluable.

“I would argue that because of the way our national government was created, whenever we have these major disagreements – over the New Deal or the Great Society – during all theses crises, these questions about the federal government arise and we have (in the Constitution) the framework for the way we debate these issues,” Grossberg said.

Madison, in “The Federalist,” wrote that the constitutional amendment process should be used only “for certain great and extraordinary occasions.”

Is this a “great and extraordinary occasion”? No, but it’s always a good occasion to consider the Constitution.