Welcome back, citizens! Caroline here. The amendments to the Constitution are vital
laws that improve citizens' rights and update the original document.
At its core, the constitutional amendment process has just two steps:
proposal and approval, as outlined in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution.
However, the work and time that goes into completing each step means that few amendments
get passed. Hundreds of amendment proposals have been introduced since 1787, but few made it far.
For example, in 1924, there were 96 proposed amendments covering 30 different subjects;
not a single one was ratified. The Constitution is a flexible document, allowing changes to be
made by adding amendments. As society and beliefs change over time, then so can the Constitution via
the amendment process. Today, we'll take a close look at how amendments are made.
The objectives today are to first explain the two-step process to add an amendment to the
U.S. Constitution; then, explain why the amendment process is rarely used. The process sounds simple:
Amendments are proposed by the federal government and approved, or ratified, by state governments.
But actually getting one through those steps? Much harder than it sounds.
There are two ways to get a proposed amendment adopted by Congress. The most common is to put the
proposal to a vote in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Proposals with a supermajority,
or two-thirds approval, in both houses, then progress to the next stage. That means at
least 67 of the 100 senators have to approve the amendment proposal, and 290 of the 435 members of
the House also have to support the change to the Constitution. That, in itself, is a tall task,
and the supermajority is also the same vote that it takes to... yes! Override a presidential veto.
All 27 amendments were proposed using the method we just described. All 27.
A second method of proposal outlined in the Constitution has never been used successfully.
Never. But here it is: The alternative is for Congress to call a National Convention after 34
of the 50 state legislatures request a special National Convention. It sounds complicated,
and it is. Remember, it's never happened. This process is available,
but Congress has always chosen to go for that two-thirds supermajority vote instead.
In the second step, the approval, again, there are two options, and the choice on which path to take
is up to Congress at the time the first step, the proposal, is completed successfully. You remember
that all 27 amendments used the same method for the first step? Similarly, one of the two options
to ratify, or approve, the amendment has been used for 26 of the 27 constitutional editions.
That method is for the legislatures of the 50 states to approve the amendment.
A legislature is a lawmaking body for a state – just like Congress makes laws for
the U.S. government, a legislature passes laws for a state government.
Also like Congress, most states have a bicameral, or two-house, legislature. In fact,
only Nebraska has a unicameral, or one-house, legislative branch; the other 49 are bicameral.
Here's the thing: Three-fourths of the 50 states have to approve the amendment for it to
be ratified. That's 38 states. And remember, all but Nebraska have a two-house legislative branch.
That means the proposed amendment would have to be approved in both the House and the Senate in
38 states. If that happens, the amendment would become the 28th edition to the Constitution.
The approval by state legislatures has been used for all but one amendment. The other method?
Well, it's complicated. The other option is for Congress to call for state ratifying conventions;
three-fourths of the states would have to approve the amendment at those conventions.
You may be asking yourself, is it really that difficult to pass an amendment? It's just two
steps! Well, yes, it is. In the first step, a proposal has to receive a supermajority in
both the Senate and House. While that may not sound that hard, it's actually quite
difficult to get a supermajority vote in even one house of Congress, much less both of them.
So often, senators and representatives vote along political party lines, and politicians
frequently have a hard time agreeing with each other. And that's just the first step!
For approval in the second step, three-fourths of the states have
to vote yes to the amendment. Since 38 state legislatures would have to
approve the amendment, and at least 37 of those states have two-house legislatures,
at least 75 lawmaking bodies would have to vote yes on the amendment for it to be approved.
Conversely, it takes only 13 states to reject an amendment and make it impossible to become
law. The process is so difficult that only 27 amendments have made it through the two steps.
Consider this: the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution,
was passed in 1791. Since then, in more than 230 years, only 17 amendments have managed to make it
successfully through the process. The most recent was the 27th Amendment in 1992, which has to do
with congressional pay and was actually introduced with the Bill of Rights all the way back in 1789.
So, by now, you may be asking, why is the amendment process so difficult? For that,
I have a simple answer: The founding fathers deliberately designed it to be difficult to make
sure that any changes were widely accepted among both the people and their elected representatives.
James Madison and other contributors to the Constitution wanted to do their best to make
it really hard for unsuitable amendments to be passed. It's pretty clear that they succeeded!
The amendment process is simple in concept but difficult in reality, especially when you consider
the intricate details of the two steps. But those details are also why the Constitution today
remains so close to its original form, with only 27 amendments added over the years, just like our
founding fathers intended. We will be discussing those amendments in more detail in future lessons.
Until next time, citizens, vote, debate, and participate, and remember to always be clever!