How can the constitution formally be changed

The amendment process originally came with restrictions protecting some agreements that the Great Compromise had settled during the Constitutional Convention. The Great Compromise also called the Connecticut Compromise was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of In part, the agreement defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the US Constitution.

It called for a bicameral legislature along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. This agreement led to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which meant less populous Southern states were allowed to count three-fifths of all non-free people toward population counts and allocations. Thus, Article V of the US Constitution, ratified in , prohibited any constitutional amendments before which would affect the foreign slave trade, the tax on slave trade, or the direct taxation on provisions of the constitution.

The formal processes of amending the constitution are the processes articulated in Article V of the Constitution. These are the Congressional method and the Constitutional Convention methods. In theory the two houses first adopt a resolution indicating that they deem an amendment necessary.

This procedure, however, has never actually been used. The U. Senate and the U. Amendment Proposal : Resolution proposing the nineteenth amendment. If at least two-thirds of the legislatures of the states make the request, Congress is then required to call a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments. This provision, many scholars argue, allows for a check on the power of the Congress to limit potential constitutional amendments. The state legislatures have, in times past, used their power to apply for a national convention in order to pressure Congress into proposing a desired amendment.

A classic example of this was demonstrated starting in the late s. During that period a movement to amend the Constitution to provide for the direct election of U. Senators caused such proposals to regularly pass the House of Representatives only to die in the Senate.

As time went by, more and more state legislatures adopted resolutions demanding that a convention be called. In response to this pressure the Senate finally relented and approved what later became the Seventeenth Amendment for fear that such a convention—if permitted to assemble—might stray to include issues above and beyond the direct election of U. The President has no formal role in the constitutional amendment process. As previously stated, the Constitution requires that at least two-thirds of the members present of both the House of Representatives and the Senate the agree to a joint resolution which proposes a constitutional amendment.

However, in Hollingsworth v. Virginia , the Supreme Court held that it is not necessary to place constitutional amendments before the President for signature and that, by the same logic, the President is powerless to veto a proposed constitutional amendment. After being officially proposed, a constitutional amendment must then be ratified either by the legislatures of at least three-fourths of the states, or by conventions in the same proportion of states.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution that have been ratified, Congress has specified the method of ratification through state conventions for only one: the 21 st Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in Most states hold elections specifically for the purpose of choosing delegates to such conventions.

New Mexico state law provides that the members of its legislature be the delegates at such a state ratification convention. Although a proposed amendment is effective after three-fourths of the states ratify it, states have, in many instances, ratified an amendment that has already become law, often for symbolic reasons. The states unanimously ratified the Bill of Rights; the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, providing for equal protection and due process; the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting; and the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women a federal constitutional right to vote.

In several cases, the ratification process took over a century. The United States Constitution can be changed informally. Informal amendments mean that the Constitution does not specifically list these processes as forms of amending the Constitution, but because of change in society or judicial review changed the rule of law de facto.

These methods depend on interpretations of what the constitution says and on interpretive understanding of the underlying intent. This type of change occurs in two major forms: through circumstantial change and through judicial review.

Sometimes society changes, leading to shifts in how constitutional rights are applied. For example, originally only land-holding white males could vote in federal elections. Due to a burgeoning middle class at the peak of the Industrial Revolution in the s, society became focused on expanding rights for the middle and working classes.

This led to the right to vote being extended to more and more people. I call it a business. They say I violate the prohibition law. The repeal of Prohibition has been the only amendment to be ratified by state conventions rather than by the legislatures. Advocates of repeal accepted ratification by convention because many state legislatures did not meet every year and waiting for them to convene would have delayed repeal. As the people would vote for state convention delegates, the convention system would also give repeal a popular mandate.

Forty-three states established conventions and achieved the needed three-quarters ratification within four months. The states, however, retained the right to set their own laws regarding the transportation, sale, and consumption of alcohol. In the caustic journalist H. Yet the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified just after Prohibition, was highly successful.

It ended a century of struggle by women seeking the right to vote. Some western states had already given women both the vote and the right to run for office. The first woman elected to the U. House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, was elected in , before the Nineteenth Amendment extended woman suffrage to all the states.

This reduced the need for congressional sessions to be held after the elections, where many members who had retired or had been defeated continued to vote in Congress. The long delays that had made sense in earlier centuries, when transportation was slow, no longer made sense in the twentieth century, especially as the need for government action seemed more pressing. Elected in November , Franklin D.

Roosevelt was the last President to have to wait until March for his inauguration. During the five-month interregnum before he took the oath of office, the national economy declined into the worst depression in American history. Once inaugurated, Roosevelt launched an ambitious New Deal program for economic relief and reform. Conservative justices ruled unconstitutional such major New Deal initiatives as the National Industrial Recovery Act aimed at improving business and labor conditions and the Agricultural Adjustment Act aimed at helping farmers.

Having had no opportunity to appoint any justices to the Supreme Court during his first term, Roosevelt contemplated supporting a constitutional amendment that would require more than a simple majority vote on the Supreme Court to strike down an act of Congress. Instead, he decided to ask for legislation to enlarge the Court. Within a few years, however, Roosevelt had appointed a majority of the Supreme Court justices.

He appointed justices who generally favored a broad interpretation of the Constitution and were sympathetic to an active and innovative federal government.

They worried that popular Presidents could use their incumbency to keep themselves in office for life, and potentially to evolve into dictators. After Republicans regained the majorities in the House and Senate, they proposed the Twenty-second Amendment, specifying a two-term limit.

Strongly supported in state legislatures with Republican majorities, it was ratified in The Amendment exempted the incumbent President, Harry Truman, so that the first Presidents to feel this restriction, ironically, were popular Republicans, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Not until Bill Clinton did a Democratic President serve two full terms and encounter the prohibition against running for a third term. Ohio Republican senator John Bricker proposed another anti-Roosevelt amendment in For instance, as commander in chief the President can sign an executive agreement with another nation to station American troops in that country.

Supporters of the amendment felt that the Senate should have been able to vote to approve or reject that agreement, the same as it would have handled a treaty. Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose. Constitutions should consist only of general provisions: The reason is, that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible changes of things.

Judicial review continued to resolve conflict and uncertainty about the Constitution. Generally, the Supreme Court operated on precedent, honoring rulings made by previous judges.

But the Court was not bound by precedent and could overturn earlier decisions when circumstances and opinion had shifted. Board of Education , for instance, declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. It reversed the earlier ruling in Plessy v. Following the Brown decision, two constitutional amendments further chipped away at racial inequalities. The Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in , gave the right to vote in Presidential elections to residents of the District of Columbia, where African Americans constituted a majority of the population.

As the seat of the federal government, the district is not a state and has no senators, only a nonvoting delegate to the U. House of Representatives. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in , abolished the poll taxes that some states had required citizens to pay in order to vote.

Although poll taxes worked against poor people in general, they fell especially hard on African Americans in the South. The shock of President John F. Next in line of succession for the Presidency came the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate, both elderly men.

People also wondered what might have occurred had President Kennedy been seriously wounded rather than killed. The Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified in , set up mechanisms to enable the Vice President to assume the Presidency if the President was incapable of functioning in office. When the Vice Presidency fell vacant, the President could nominate a replacement, with the consent of the Senate and House.

The Vietnam War prompted ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment in Reformers pointed out that young men were subject to the military draft at the age of eighteen, and should, therefore, be able to vote for the leaders who were sending them into combat. A few states already allowed voters younger than twenty-one. The Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen nationwide.

However, younger Americans have often failed to take advantage of this right. It struck down school desegregation, school-sponsored prayer, and state legislatures that gave more seats to sparsely populated rural areas than to heavily populated cities.

In none of these efforts, however, could they muster sufficient support to attain the two-thirds votes needed in Congress for an amendment. Eisenhower had little idea of what a powerful champion of change Warren would become.

The new chief justice took over leadership of a Court sharply divided between those who believed in judicial restraint and judicial activism. Warren proved adept at forging new majorities among the justices, and he unexpectedly became an advocate of individual rights and liberties.

He convinced the other justices to join in a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education , which declared school segregation unconstitutional.

Warren was also proud of his leadership in striking down the old system of apportionment in state legislatures that gave more representation to sparsely populated rural districts than to large cities.

Carr , the Court ruled that all legislative districts must be equal in population. The purpose was to ensure that the interests of the states were represented in the national legislature. However, some argued that the people should directly elect their senators. They thought the interests of the states would be preserved because the people were the source of all government power. The first of nearly congressional resolutions calling for direct election of senators came in Over the next 85 years, an amendment to directly elect U.

Finally, in , the 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of senators, was ratified. Which statement correctly describes an important way that the process of amending the U.

Constitution is different from the process of creating federal laws? Question Overview: This question requires you to draw a contrast between the process of amending the U. Constitution and the process of creating federal laws. Using your own knowledge of how federal laws are made and a chart showing methods of amending the Constitution, you must analyze the major steps in each process and the governmental branch es involved.

This question engages the reasoning skills needed to analyze both processes and identify the major difference between them. Option A is correct. If you selected this option, you likely noticed that the legislative branch is the only government branch mentioned on the chart.

Of the three branches of the U.