Not one court has any power whatsoever to *change* the Constitution. The Supreme Court may rule on particular cases regarding interpretation or expression of the Constitution in law or in practice, but they never change it. This is why a judicial ruling, even from SCOTUS can never settle “once and for all” a Constitutional question.
It is a lawyerly construct, and a wise one, which assigns weight to precedent. This stabilizes and renders predictable the working of justice, but it does not create new law. Legislatures alone create law.
There is a way to change the Constitution, and it is exclusively a function of Congress to initiate, without the executive or the judicial branch having a single word to say about it. “Initiate” is even more narrow than it looks here — if Congress convenes a Constitutional Convention, Congress is then powerless in the outcome from that moment forward. Also, if a sufficient number of the several states submit “applications” to Congress, for sucha convention then Congress SHALL convene one, and likelwise is then locked out.
Even Congress lacks the power to change the Constitution — all they can do is open the door, either as they wish or when commanded.
There is no consensus on whether such a convention can be limited in scope. It is nice to believe that this is so, but the first time some miscreant gets up to propose something out of scope, the only recourses for the majority are log-rolling and violence. In a Constitutional Convention, men without honor would dominate, wielding the heckler’s veto.
