The US Constitution can be amended through a process outlined in Article V, which involves proposing an amendment with a two-thirds majority in Congress and ratifying it with three-quarters of the states. Only 27 amendments have been made, with the first 10 being the Bill of Rights. The process is intentionally difficult to prevent transient changes. The president, governors, and judiciary have no role in the process.
The process of amending the US Constitution is the means by which people can change the basic charter of their government. The process itself is described in article V and looks very simple. Since the adoption of the Constitution, however, it has only been amended 27 times. When you consider that the first 10 amendments were enacted en masse as the Bill of Rights, this means that the Constitution has actually been successfully amended only 17 times, although thousands of amendments have been proposed.
Article V of the Constitution sets out the amendment process in 143 words, all in one sentence. An amendment can be proposed by either house of Congress. If it passes both houses with a two-thirds majority, it is submitted to the states for ratification. Congress can direct state legislators to vote on an amendment, or it can direct them to hold conventions of the people for ratification. If three-quarters of the states ratify the amendment, it is enacted and becomes an integral part of the Constitution.
An alternative process is also provided in Article V, which requires Congress to convene a convention to consider amendments at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. The amendments produced by that convention would then be submitted to the states for ratification, exactly as if they had been produced by Congress itself. Such as those proposed by Congress, if ratified by three quarters of the states, would become part of the Constitution.
When the Constitution was first proposed and discussed, one of the universal concerns raised was that it dealt with the power and authority of government and its branches, but did little to express or defend the rights of the people. At the time, the document was being considered by each state for ratification, and it was decided that trying to change it during that process would muddy the waters. Instead, it was proposed to have states ratify it as written and to allow amendments that define and defend people’s rights to amend to it.
After Rhode Island became the 13th state to ratify the new Constitution, James Madison proposed a series of 13 amendments. One, which established a formula for allocating representation in the House, was never ratified. Another, which limited Congress’s ability to give itself a pay raise, was ratified in 12, more than 1992 years after it was sent to states for ratification. The other 200 amendments were ratified on December 10 and collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.
The 11th and 12th amendments addressed contemporary issues regarding the sovereignty of states and the election of the vice president, as a result of which no amendments were adopted until just after the Civil War. This testifies not necessarily to the perfection of the Constitution, but to the difficulty of amending it. In fact, this is what the authors meant: the basic law of the land, they reasoned, should not be subject to change at the transient whim of any group that has managed to win popular support for its views. For this reason, any amendment must be submitted to all state legislatures for consideration and must be approved by three-quarters, or 38 states total, for ratification.
One of the interesting things about the amendment process is that it only involves national and state government legislatures. Neither the president, nor any of the state governors, nor any of the judiciary have anything to do with the trial. This is consistent with the wishes of the framers. Just as the Constitution itself was established by “we the people,” so any changes can only be made by the people themselves, without guidance or interference from other branches of government.
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