Let’s say that you come up to me and say, “Pub, ole’ buddy, I need to sell my old car. I don’t have the time, and you’re retired. If you can sell that old clunker of mine, I’ll give you ten percent.” So we conclude a written contract (New England) or just shake hands (the South). In this transaction, you are the Principal, I am the Agent, and the agreement, written or otherwise, is the Agency Agreement. As long as I stay within the bounds of the Agency Agreement, all is well with the world. You as Principal can bind me as Agent to the Agency Agreement, but as Agent, I can’t bind you to anything except that which is written specifically in the Agency Agreement.
But let’s say that instead of selling your car, I sell your house.
Is my sale of your house valid? No. It’s null and void because the Agency Agreement didn’t permit me to sell anything but your car.
Could you sue the pants off me for breach of contract and civil fraud? Yes.
Could you bring me up on charges of criminal fraud? That depends on the wording of the statute in the state in which we concluded the Agency Agreement.
The Principle of Agency applies to an Amendments Convention. The states request Congress for an Amendments Convention to handle a specific subject or subjects. If the petitions reach the two-thirds threshold, Congress is required by Article V to set the time and place for that Amendments Convention, and the language of the petitions is inserted into the convention call to define the purview of the Amendments Convention.
In this arrangement, the states are the Principals, the Amendments Convention is their Agent, and the convention call is the Agency Agreement. It is a matter of settled contract law that an Agent cannot go outside the purview of his Agency Agreement lest his actions become legally invalid. The Amendments Convention is required to adhere to the wording of the Agency Agreement.
Concerning delegate selection, if you go back to that post you’ve already read, you’ll see two links. Print off the documents in those links and put them in a binder. I needed to do that because I refer to those documents all the time. The ALEC document has one approach to delegate selection, and the ABA document takes a different position. Personally, I side with ALEC. The states make the call.
The consolidated government can have nothing to do with the workings of a federal convention. There is no enumerated power in the constitution for it to do so. As C210 pointed out, the states met last month and will meet soon again to hash our convention details.
The states will meet in their corporate capacity, just as they used to do prior to the 17th Amendment, as they would do today if a presidential election went to the House of Reps. As such, CA will more than likely get as many votes as Wyoming, hopefully just one each.
My fear is backdoor corruption of the process. A few state speakers or senate majority leaders might get the word that it would be a shame if anything happened to their families, and if they shut down the Article V process, some cushy, no-show, placeman job w/pension awaits them in DC.