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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War.
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. [1] It expresses the principle of federalism, whereby the federal government and the individual states share power, by mutual agreement, with the federal government having the supremacy.
The legislatures of three-fourths (presently 38) of the states; or. State ratifying conventions in three-fourths (presently 38) of the states. [4] The decision of which ratification method will be used for any given amendment is Congress' alone to make. [3] Only for the 21st amendment was the latter procedure invoked and followed. Upon being ...
A proposed amendment becomes an operative part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (currently 38 of the 50 states). There is no further step. The text requires no additional action by Congress or anyone else after ratification by the required number of states. [133]
The Guarantee Clause of Article 4 of the Constitution states that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." These two provisions indicate states did not surrender their wide latitude to adopt a constitution, the fundamental documents of state law, when the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
Although federal property can be found in every state, the largest concentrations are in the Western United States, where, for example, the federal government owns over eighty percent of the land within Nevada. [15] Pursuant to a parallel clause in Article One, Section Eight, the Supreme Court has held that states may not tax such federal property.
In the 1st United States Congress, following the state legislatures' request, James Madison proposed twenty constitutional amendments based on state bills of rights and English sources such as the Bill of Rights 1689. [9] Among them was an amendment protecting findings of fact in civil cases exceeding a certain dollar value from judicial review.
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.