Amending Constitution no easy task
Philadelphia ? Amending the U.S. Constitution isn’t easy; it was never meant to be.
Feminists found that out when they backed the unsuccessful Equal Rights Amendment a quarter-century ago. And President Bush may find it out now that he has announced his support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
“If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America,” Bush said Tuesday.
The framers of the Constitution realized that future generations might amend the document to address “issues of intense public concern,” but they wanted to make the process “cumbersome” enough to ensure that a successful amendment really would reflect the will of the people, said Nathaniel Persily, assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Persily estimated that “hundreds of amendments, maybe thousands” have been proposed.
Women’s rights, flag-burning, balanced budget, school prayer, line-item veto, opposition to abortion — name the issue in contemporary America, and you will find somebody calling for a constitutional amendment to address it.
But only 27 amendments have made the grade since the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the original document on Sept. 17, 1787, in Philadelphia.
None has sped through ratification process like the 26th Amendment, which gave the vote to 18-year-olds at a time when young Americans were dying in an unpopular war in Southeast Asia.
The amendment emerged from Congress on March 23, 1971 and ratification was complete by July 1, 1971.
| Article V of the Constitution requires that two-thirds of each house of Congress approve an amendment before it can even be presented to the states for consideration. (It also allows two-thirds of the state legislatures to ask Congress to call a convention to propose amendments.)Ratification requires approval by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by special conventions in three-fourths of the states. |
At the other end of the speed chart is the 27th Amendment, which prohibits a sitting Congress from giving itself a raise.
That amendment was proposed by the first Congress on Sept. 25, 1789, but wasn’t ratified until New Jersey approved it on May 7, 1992.
Although constitutional amendments have had profound social implications, only once has an amendment taken aim at a specific social issue.
The 18th Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes …”
It was repealed in 1933 by the 21st Amendment.