August 18th was the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment – which gave women the right to vote. Given the recent sound and fury over amending the 14th amendment to remove the provision governing “birthright citizenship,” it might be instructive to review what actually goes into amending the Constitution.
Article V states:
Let’s paraphrase.
Step one: two-thirds of the House (292 members) and the Senate (67 members) must propose and approve an amendment
OR
two-thirds of all state legislatures (34) must call a Constitutional Convention to propose amendments.
Step two: three-quarters of state legislatures, or three-quarters of state constitutional conventions (38 states) must ratify the amendment.
The most recently passed amendment (the 27th, which prevents laws affecting Congressional salaries from taking effect until the beginning of the next session of Congress) was ratified a full 202 years after it was first proposed by James Madison. That’s an exceptionally long period – of course, a number of states were added in the intervening years, necessitating more states to sign on – but it serves to underline that amendments to the nation’s governing document are not to be undertaken lightly.
