During the course of our history, in addition to the 27 amendments
which have been ratified by the required three-fourths of the States, six
other amendments have been submitted to the States but have not been
ratified by them.
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The United States Constitution was written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It has 27 amendments, but the first 10 were ratified simultaneously in 1791 so it was amended one time with ten amendments. The other 17 amendments were ratified one at a time. So the US Constitution has 27 amendments but has been amended 18 times.
The first ten amendments to the constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. These amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791.
In 1789, the first Congress proposed a set of twelve amendments, written by James Madison. As required by the Constitution, the amendments then went to the states. By December 1791, three fourths of the states had ratified 10 of the 12 amendments. These 10 amendments became known as the Bill of Rights.
There are actually four methods.An Amendment may be proposed by two-thirds vote in each house of congress, and ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.An Amendment may be proposed by Congress and then ratified by conventions, called for that purpose in three-fourths of the state3.An Amendment may be proposed by a national convention, called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of state legislatures, and then ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.An amendment may be proposed by a national convention and ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the states.Answered directly from the "American Government" Textbook.
The method of ratification is decided by the body that passes the amendment, which historically has been the US Congress (by 2/3 vote of both houses).In all but one case, the approved amendments were ratified by state legislatures.However, the language of the 21st Amendment (1933) specified its passage by state conventions rather than state legislatures. This was particularly chosen to avoid opposition by the same groups that had successfully lobbied for the passage of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition, 1920) which the 21st Amendment repealed.* Should a national constitutional convention (Article V Convention) successfully be called, it too would be empowered to specify the means by which any of its proposed amendments would be ratified.