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#3 - The Amendment Process

Last updated almost 3 years ago
11 questions
Article V of the Constitution says how the Constitution can be amended—that is, how provisions can be added to the text of the Constitution. The Constitution is not easy to amend: only twenty-seven amendments have been added to the Constitution since it was adopted.
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New ideas can be added to the U.S. Constitution.

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If a new idea or a change is added to the Constitution, it is called an _______.
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How many times has the Constitution been amended?

Article V spells out a few different ways in which the Constitution can be amended. One method—the one used for every amendment so far—is that Congress proposes an amendment to the states; the states must then decide whether to ratify the amendment. But in order for Congress to propose an amendment, two-thirds of each House of Congress must vote for it. And then three-quarters of the states must ratify the amendment before it is added to the Constitution. So if slightly more than one-third of the House of Representatives, or slightly more than one-third of the Senate, or thirteen out of the fifty states object to a proposal, it will not become an amendment by this route. In that way, a small minority of the country has the ability to prevent an amendment from being added to the Constitution.
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Who decides whether or not to ratify (or agree to) an amendment once it has been proposed?

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A small minority can vote against an amendment and prevent it from being added to the Constitution.

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The Constitution is very easy to change.

The amendments to the Constitution have come in waves. The first twelve Amendments, including the Bill of Rights, were added by 1804. Then there were no amendments for more than half a century. In the wake of the Civil War, three important Amendments were added: the Thirteenth (outlawing slavery) in 1865, the Fourteenth (mainly protecting equal civil rights) in 1868, and the Fifteenth (forbidding racial discrimination in voting) in 1870.
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Almost half of the amendments (the first 12) were added to the Constitution early in our country's history.

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At what point in our history did the next wave of amendments get added?

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The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were all related to which of the following ideas?

After the Civil War Amendments, another forty-three years passed until the Constitution was amended again; then four more Amendments (Sixteen through Nineteen) were added between 1913 and 1920. Seven more amendments were adopted at pretty regular intervals between 1920 and 1971, but except for one very unusual amendment, there have been no amendments to the Constitution since 1971.
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How many amendments have been added to the Constitution since 1971?

The following two paragraphs include examples of modern-day proposed amendments that have not been passed yet. Read about each of the proposed amendments and explain why you think they have not been passed.

Rep. Steve King is not a big fan of the 16th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and made it clear that Congress had the right to levy a national income tax. His proposal is to repeal the 16th Amendment entirely. The resolution was sent to a House subcommittee in January 2015, where it has remained.

Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana reintroduced a proposed amendment to ban desecration of the American flag. If this sounds familiar, in 2006 the same amendment failed in the Senate by just one vote after the House easily passed it with a two-thirds majority vote. Since then, the proposed amendment hasn’t gotten a full vote in Congress again.
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Explain why you think each of these proposed amendments has not been passed yet.