when it was ratified in 1789 the US
Constitution didn't just institute a
government by the people it provided a
way for the people to alter the
Constitution itself and yet of the
nearly 11,000 amendments proposed in the
centuries since only 27 have succeeded
as of 2016 so what is it that makes the
Constitution so hard to change in short
its creators the founders of the United
States were trying to create a unified
country from 13 different colonies which
needed assurance that their agreements
couldn't be easily undone so here's what
they decided for an amendment to even be
proposed it must receive a two-thirds
vote of approval in both houses of
Congress or a request from two-thirds of
state legislatures to call a national
convention and that's just the first
step to actually change the Constitution
the amendment must be ratified by
three-quarters of all states to do this
each state can either have its
legislature vote on the amendment or it
can hold a separate ratification
convention with delegates elected by
voters the result of such high
thresholds is that today the American
Constitution is quite static most other
democracies pass amendments every couple
of years the u.s. on the other hand
hasn't passed one since 1992 at this
point you may wonder how any amendments
managed to pass at all the first 10
known as the Bill of Rights includes
some of America's most well known
freedoms such as the freedom of speech
and the right to a fair trial
these were passed all at once to resolve
some conflicts from the original
Constitutional Convention years later
the 13th amendment which abolished
slavery as well as the 14th and 15th
amendments only passed
after a bloody civil war ratifying
amendments has also become harder as the
country has grown larger and more
diverse the first ever proposed
amendment a formula to assign
congressional representatives was on the
verge of ratification in the 1790s
however as more and more states joined
the Union the number needed to reach the
3/4 mark increased as well leaving it
unmanifest a today there are many
suggested amendments including outlawing
the burning of the flag limiting
congressional terms or even repealing
the Second Amendment while many enjoy
strong support their likelihood of
passing is slim Americans today are the
most politically polarized since the
Civil War
making it nearly impossible to reach a
broad consensus in fact the late Supreme
Court Justice Antonin Scalia once
calculated that due to America's
representative system of government it
could take as little as 2% of the total
population to block an amendment of
course the simplest solution would be to
make the Constitution easier to amend by
lowering the thresholds required for
proposal and ratification that however
would require its own amendment instead
historical progress has mainly come from
the US Supreme Court which has expanded
its interpretation of existing
constitutional laws to keep up with the
times
considering that Supreme Court justices
are unelected and served for life once
appointed this is far from the most
democratic option interestingly the
founders themselves may have foreseen
this problem early on in a letter to
James Madison Thomas Jefferson wrote
that laws should expire every 19 years
rather than having to be changed or
repealed since every political process
is full of obstacles that distort the
will of the people although he believed
that the basic principles of the
Constitution would endure he stressed
that the earth belongs to the living and
not to the dead
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