Every brief _for_ the new Amendment, on the fallacy of the _sheer assumption_ that the Fifth Article _is_ a grant, contends that the Article makes a fractional part of the state legislatures an omnipotent Parliament for the American people, a Parliament not restrained by any constitutional limitations in state or national constitutions but a Parliament which can do what it will with every individual right of every human being in America. These briefs neither know nor care that their concept of the Fifth Article means that the “conventions” of the American citizens, twelve years after the Declaration of Independence, intended to make and did make themselves absolute “subjects” of governments, not one of whose legislators was to be elected by Americans in their capacity as American citizens. The foremost of these briefs were written by eminent “constitutional” lawyers who had, as clients, the very governments which claimed this omnipotence over individual Americans as their “subjects.” Every brief, _against_ the new Amendment, not only admitted but asserted the absurd assumption that the Fifth Article is a “grant” to the grantors and to the state governments. In the foremost brief against the new Amendment, that absurd assumption is asserted or mentioned over fifty times. On this absurd assumption, every argument, in _these_ briefs, as well as in the opposing briefs, is based. In this respect, there was but one difference between any brief and another. That difference was in reference to the _extent_ of the supposed “grant” which the grantors made to themselves and to the state governments. Not one brief, presented in these litigations of 1920, knew or urged the undoubted fact that, _because_ our government is both federal and national, if it wants new power to interfere with the freedom of the American citizen, that government can get that power in only one CONSTITUTIONAL mode, through the “conventions” named in the Fifth Article. No briefer knew the legal necessity that all power _of that kind_ must be obtained directly from the citizens of America, assembled in their “conventions.” We ourselves know that there was a day in America when that legal necessity “was felt and acknowledged by all.” It is almost impossible for us, therefore, educated as we are in the experience of the Americans who did know, to believe these statements about these briefs. Yet the briefs speak for themselves. Before, however, we turn to verify the statements by the briefs themselves, it is well that we recall one amazing question and answer, during the arguments of 1920 in the Supreme Court, which question and answer overwhelmingly demonstrate that none of these “constitutional” lawyers knew or cared about the facts we know.