mith, this court held that a referendum to the
voters on the ratification of Federal Amendments was in conflict with
Article V of the Federal Constitution, therefore null and void, as
this Constitution was the supreme law of the land. The decision said:
"It is not the function of courts or legislative bodies, National or
State, to alter the method which the U. S. Constitution has fixed."

Article II, Section 32 of the Tennessee constitution reads: "No
convention or General Assembly of this State shall act upon any
amendment of the Constitution of the United States proposed by
Congress to the several States unless such convention or General
Assembly shall have been elected after such amendment is submitted."
The presumption was naturally that this clause was nullified by the U.
S. Supreme Court's decision. On June 10, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
president of the National American Suffrage Association, telegraphed
Governor Albert H. Roberts, urging him to call an extra session. He,
thereupon, sought the opinion of Attorney General Frank M. Thompson as
to the power of the present Legislature to ratify, who answered that
it would have the power. He said that he had submitted the question to
the U. S. Department of Justice through Solicitor General John L.
Frierson, to whom President Wilson had also appealed, whose answer in
brief was as follows: "The ruling of the Supreme Court in the Ohio
case and the consideration which I gave to this question in preparing
those cases for hearing leave no doubt in my mind that the power to
ratify an amendment to the Federal Constitution is derived solely
from the people of the United States through this constitution and not
from the people or the constitution of the State. The provision of the
Tennessee constitution that no Legislature shall act on an amendment
to the Federal Constitution unless elected after the proposal of the
amendment, if valid, would undoubtedly be a restriction upon that
power.... If the Legislature is called in extra session it will have
the clear right to ratify."

A request was made to President Wilson for assistance, and on June 24
he sent the following telegram to Governor Roberts: "It would be a
real service to the party and to the nation if it is possible for you
under the peculiar provisions of your State constitution, having in
mind the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the Ohio case, to
call a special session of the Legislature to consider the Federal