A formal assembly for the purpose of creating or revising a constitution. Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides two methods for proposing amendments, one of which is through a convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures.
From Latin 'constitutio' (establishment) and 'conventio' (a coming together). The term gained prominence during the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, which was originally called to revise the Articles of Confederation but instead created an entirely new constitution.
The 1787 Constitutional Convention was technically illegal—the delegates were only authorized to fix the Articles of Confederation, not scrap them entirely! They solved this by requiring ratification by the people through special state conventions, bypassing the existing government that never would have approved its own replacement.
The Constitutional Convention (1787) was exclusively male; women were structurally excluded from governance discourse and ratification. This historical erasure shaped the document itself (3/5ths clause, coverture assumptions).
When referencing the convention, acknowledge women's exclusion and note that modern constitutional interpretation includes feminist jurisprudence and women's equal citizenship rights established later.
Women's constitutional scholarship (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Cass Sunstein, etc.) has modernized interpretation to center equality. Credit scholars who fought for explicit gender protections later added via amendment.
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