A joint resolution containing a draft amendment to the United States Constitution must be approved either by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or by a special convention called at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. In either case, the approved draft amendment must be ratified by either three-fourths of the state legislatures or three-fourths of the state conventions. The approval of the amendment by the states is final. An analysis of the text of Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 allows us to conclude that four procedures for adopting amendments to the Constitution are possible: Congress – Legislatures; Congress – Conventions; Congress – Conventions; Congress – Legislatures. In practice, the first option was mostly used. Only the XXIth Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment on the Prohibition Act, was adopted by the Congress-Congress-Conventions method. To date, 27 amendments to the Constitution have been adopted.
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are generally referred to as the Bill of Rights. There are different versions explaining why provisions guaranteeing the political, civil, and procedural rights of citizens were not included in the text of the Constitution. According to one of them, most of these rights and freedoms, according to the authors of the Constitution, were so natural that they did not need to be mentioned separately. During the ratification process, however, state legislatures urged that the Constitution be amended to include guarantees of rights and freedoms. The states of North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify the Constitution at all until the Bill of Rights was included. As a result, by December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments had been ratified by the required number of states. Thus, the first and most far-reaching change in the U.S. Constitution was the adoption of amendments that not only established a list of fundamental rights and freedoms, but also protected them from encroachment, including from their own government.
Of the subsequent amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the only absolutely unnecessary and destructive one was the 18th Amendment (adopted in 1919 and prohibiting “the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages for the purpose of their consumption” as well as their import and export from the United States. The consequences of 13 years of Prohibition were devastating: sharply reduced tax revenues, thousands of jobs lost as a result of the closure of bars and factories which produced alcohol, the impossibility to legally sell alcohol, which hurt the restaurant business. At the same time, organized crime and smuggling were rapidly gaining momentum. This is why the XXI amendment, which repealed the “dry law” in 1933, can be evaluated very positively.
All the other amendments were mostly aimed at either extending the rights of citizens, or at limiting or clarifying the competence and terms of state authorities, beginning with Amendment XI (1795), which established immunity from prosecution for parties to common law or equitable actions brought or pursued against one state by citizens of another state or by foreign nationals or subjects. The 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, and the 14th Amendment (1868) provided an expanded definition of citizenship. The XVth Amendment (1870) prohibited racial discrimination in elections. The Nineteenth Amendment (1920) granted voting rights to women. The XXIII Amendment (1961) gave D.C. residents the right to run for president, the XXIV Amendment (1964) abolished the poll tax, and the XXVI Amendment (1971) lowered the voting age to 18.
The remaining amendments dealt with state agencies. The 12th Amendment (1804) changed the original procedure for electing the president and vice president and established an extraordinary procedure for electing the president. The 14th Amendment, already mentioned, includes a very noteworthy section 3, which provides that members of Congress, officers of the United States, and representatives of the three branches of state government who are sworn to uphold the Constitution and who have subsequently participated in sedition or rebellion against the United States, or have aided its enemies, may not be senators, representatives to Congress, or electors for president and vice president, nor hold any civil or military office established by the United States or a particular state. Amendment XVI (1913) expanded the taxing power of Congress, Amendment XVII (1913) introduced direct elections to the Senate, Amendment XX (1933) determined the end of terms of the President, Vice President, and members of Congress, as well as how the President would assume office. Amendment XXII (1951) limited the president’s term to two terms, while Amendment XXV (1967) clarified issues of presidential succession and the terms of the interim presidency.
The XXVII Amendment, which established that no law altering the compensation of Senators and Representatives in Congress should go into effect until after the next election to the House of Representatives, has a very interesting history. In 1789, President James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States, drafted 12 amendments to the Constitution (ten of which later became the Bill of Rights). One of the proposed amendments was approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, but initially only six states ratified it. It was this amendment that was finally ratified more than 200 years later, on May 7, 1992, and became the XXVII Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the most recent to date.