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Is the US Constitution too difficult to amend? - Coggle Diagram
Is the US Constitution too difficult to amend?
Features of the Constition
Codified
Rigid - rules and protections are enrchched so a supermajority is needed to make amendmnets
Entrenched
Revolutionary
Previous Amendments
There have been around 12,000 proposed ammendments to the constitutions but only 27 amedments have ever been made. With the most recent one in 1992.
The Bill of Rights
The 'Bill of Rights' is the name of the first 10 Amendments of the US Constition. Shortly after ratifing the constituiton, the founding farthers decided to add the Bill of Rights to the constitution.
This was done as Anti-Federalists wanted stronger protections of rights as they were concerned that the federal government would be a threat to individual rights.
Other notable amendments are -
1st Amendment – certainly had the biggest impact as the united states has always been seen as a beacon of freedom which is ensured by the first amendment which guarantees not just speech but freedom of press, religion and protest.
2nd Amendment – most contentious amendment which meaning has been argued about.
7th Amendment – right to a trial by jury
15th amendment – reserves citizens suffrage rights
19th Amendment – reserves women's right to vote
Despite amendments being few in number it doesn't mean the constituition is inflexible. Many of these amendments were incredibly significant, with broad consequences.
Why do so many attempts at amending the US Constitution end in failure?
Recent Attempts
Human Life Amendment - first proposed in 1973 to protect the lives of unborn babies.
Death Penalty Abolition Amendment - First proposed in 1992 would make the death penalty illegal.
School Prayer Amendment - first proposed in 2003 would ban overtun the ban on congress establishing a national religion.
Federal Marriage Amendment - prposed in 1992 would seek to define marriage as just being between a man and a women
Because the process of amending the constituion is incredibly difficult.
Foudning Farthers wanted to make the process easier than a unanimous vote but still hard enough that it couldn't be changed too often.
The amendment process:
In order to amend the constitution, the amendment must go through a proposal stage and then a ratification stage. There are
two options
for how the amendment can be passed
A proposed amendment passes the House of Representatives and the Senate with a two-thirds vote in both.
Then at the state level either an amendment is ratified by a simple majority in three quaters of state legislatures.
or an amendment is ratified by a state ratifiying convention in three-quaters of states.
A national constitutional convention is called on an amendment by two-thirds of state legislatures.
Then at the state level either an amendment is ratified by a simple majority in three quaters of state legislatures. Or...
An amendment is ratified by a state ratifiying convention in three-quaters of states.
The requirement for supermajorities is a big stumbling block. At both stages detailed below, an amendment requires a super majority of either two-thirds or three-quaters.
As the USA has grown this require has become increasingly more difficult to meet...
In the first congress there were only 65 people in the House and 26 in the senate, meaning just 44 House members and 18 senators needed to agree to a proposal to pass the first stage. Now the House needs 287 to agree and the senate needs 67 to agree.
The second stage originally needed just 9 of the 13 states to agree; today it needs 38 of 50 states to agree.
The United States has also become extrememly partisan making hard for Americans to agree on what direction the country should take.