Open Research Questions

These are open questions that would strengthen the case for ratification if answered rigorously. The GitHub repository is open for contributions.

The Connecticut Deadlock

Connecticut's two legislative chambers deadlocked in 1789–1791, leaving the count one state short of ratification. The nature of that deadlock is undocumented in the sources we have.

• Was it a procedural failure or substantive disagreement?
• Eugene LaVergne, a New Jersey attorney, argued in federal court that Connecticut had actually ratified but that its records were lost in archives. Courts rejected the case. What evidence did he submit, and have archivists independently reviewed the Connecticut records?
• Primary archival sources at the Connecticut State Library have not been systematically reviewed for this purpose.

If Connecticut ratified, the pre-Kentucky count clears eleven states which was the original threshold and the legal posture of the amendment changes significantly. Maybe we've been running under an incomplete constitution this whole time!

The 1929 Apportionment Act

Congress capped the House at 435 in 1929 by ordinary statute, after refusing to reapportion for a full decade following the 1920 census. The political history of that decision should be better explained.

• Who sponsored the 1929 Act, who opposed it, and what arguments were made on the floor?
• Were any constitutional challenges mounted at the time?
• The rural-vs-urban power struggle of the 1920s is the obvious backdrop, how explicitly did sponsors defend the cap in those terms?

The 1929 Act is the reason Article the First matters so much today. Its legislative history is central to the argument.

The Transcription Error

The enrolled text of Article the First contains a word that differs from the version passed by Congress. In the third tier, one copy reads "more" where the passed version reads "less," producing a mathematical impossibility: the stated minimum number of representatives exceeds the stated maximum during certain population ranges.

• Which enrolled copy contains the error, and does it appear in all copies or only some?
• Legal scholars disagree on whether this is fatal or whether courts would resolve it by reading the text against obvious intent (a scribal error).
• If ratified, this question goes to the Supreme Court. Textualist vs. originalist approaches point in different directions.

This is the strongest technical counterargument to ratification and deserves a thorough treatment before it comes up in litigation.

Comparative Representation Ratios

The U.S. ratio of roughly one representative per 760,000 people is an outlier among peer democracies.

• United Kingdom: ~1 MP per 72,000 constituents
• Germany, Canada, France, Australia: all lower ratios than the United States

Hard figures across comparable democracies, normalized for population and legislative structure, would make the U.S. outlier status clear. The data exists so we need to compile it.