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Thirty-three amendments to the Constitution of the United States have been proposed by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification since the Constitution was put into operation on March 4, 1789. Twenty-seven of those, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution.
Among these, Amendments 1–10 are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, and Amendments 13–15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Excluding the Twenty-seventh Amendment , which was pending before the states for 202 years, 225 days, the longest pending amendment that was successfully ratified was the Twenty-second Amendment , which ...
The idea behind this amendment is to reduce corruption in the legislative branch by requiring an election before a congressperson's salary increase takes effect. The public can thus remove members of Congress from office before their salaries increase. [6] It is unclear whether the amendment produced any change in congressional behavior. [7]
The second way to propose an amendment is by two-thirds “…of the several States,” which “…call a Convention for proposing Amendments….” The first process is by far the more popular.
Congress can pass a bill that varies the pay of representatives and senators, but it cannot take effect until an election for the U.S. House.
It is unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to repeal a prior amendment, as well as being the only amendment to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions. The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, after years of advocacy by the temperance movement.
Former Tennessee Attorney General Paul G. Summers writes this regular civics education guest opinion column about the U.S. Constitution.
The second, less common method, is for amendments to be appended to the end of the main text in the form of special articles of amendment, leaving the body of the original text intact. Although the wording of the original text is not altered, the doctrine of implied repeal applies. In other words, in the event of conflict, an article of ...