How easy is it to amend the U.S. Constitution?

HistoryUS HistoryUS Government
Written By Jonathan Milner

Critical Analysis

Find answers to the following questions using the visual above, any links below, your big brain, and your knowledge of American government and politics:

  1. What article of the Constitution lays out the amendment process?

  2. What are the two steps in the Amendment process?

  3. Which of those steps has a higher threshold (requires more agreement) for success?

  4. Which part of which step of the amendment process has not yet been used?

  5. Amend means to modify formally, as a legal document or legislative bill. In more normal usage, amend also means to make better; improve; correct; reform. Why do you think the Framers of the Constitution added an amendment process to the Constitution.

  6. The United States currently has the world’s oldest and shortest written Constitution. Explain how the ability to amend the constitution has impacted its longevity.

  7. The U.S. Constitution was itself an act of amendment, written in 1787 because the Articles of Confederation were technically amendable but, for all practical purposes, not. At the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, the Virginia delegate George Mason, pointing out that everyone knew the Constitution that they were drafting was imperfect, argued that “amendments therefore will be necessary, and it will be better to provide for them in an easy, regular and constitutional way than to trust to chance and violence.” Did we created an easy and regular way to amend the Constitution?

  8. The U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787, was written to be amended: mended, repaired, reformed, and improved. It hasn't exactly worked out that way. More than eleven thousand constitutional amendments were formally introduced on the floor of Congress between 1789 and 2021 and many thousands more have been proposed by the public, but only twenty-seven have ever been ratified, making the American Constitution one of the world's most difficult to amend. Why is our Constitution so hard to amend?

  9. The small number of Constitutional Amendments that have passed (27) would have surprised the nation’s founders, who knew the Constitution they had created was imperfect and who assumed that future generations would fix their mistakes and regularly adapt the document to changing times. “If there are errors, it should be remembered, that the seeds of reformation are sown in the work itself,” James Wilson said to a crowd in 1787. Years later, Gouverneur Morris wrote to a friend about the mind-set of the Constitution’s framers: “Surrounded by difficulties, we did the best we could; leaving it with those who should come after us to take counsel from experience, and exercise prudently the power of amendment, which we had provided.” Thomas Jefferson went further, proposing that the nation adopt an entirely new charter every two decades. A constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years,” he wrote to James Madison in 1789. “If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.” Imagine the Framers wanted to remake the Article V amendment process to make it easier. How would you recommend them to rewrite the amendment process?

  10. Since the Constitution was ratified, over 11,000 Amendments have been proposed but only 27 have been ratified. (I did the math. That's an average of one amendment every 8.66666666667 years!) What is one consequence of the difficulty of ratifying amendments to the U.S. Constitution?

Write and Discuss

Take ten minutes to write about the question at the top of the page and then discuss with your classmates.

Act on your Learning

The original Constitution did not outlaw slavery and did not allow women to vote. Those problems were fixed with amendments to the Constitution (XIII and XIX) celebrate Constitution Day this September 17th by thinking about how you would change the Constitution and the Bill of Rights if you could, then propose an Amendment to the US Constitution: Read about the constitutional amendment process, write a proposal for a new amendment to the constitution, and send it to your congressional representative.

Get Creative

Create the world’s easiest and then create the world’s hardest method for amending a constitution.

Learning Extension

Check out the amazing website: Amend and read some of the great stories of different Amendments.

 
 

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Jonathan Milner

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