The Amendment Process

There are two major steps in the amendment process. First, amendments must be proposed. Amendments can be proposed in two different ways. An amendment can be proposed by the Congress if two-thirds of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate vote in favor of it. Alternatively, two-thirds of the legislatures of the fifty states can call for a constitutional convention for the purposes of proposing amendments to the Constitution. Since the Constitution was ratified in 1789, numerous amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by the Congress, but the states have never voted to call for a new constitutional convention.

Once an amendment to the Constitution has been proposed, it must be ratified to become "valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of [the] Constitution," according to Article V of the Constitution. Article V specifies two methods by which proposed amendments can be ratified. First, an amendment can be ratified if three-fourths of the legislatures of the states vote in support of it. Alternatively, the Congress can direct the states to establish special ratifying conventions to consider proposed amendments. If three-fourths of these conventions approve the amendment, it is ratified and becomes part of the Constitution.

Every amendment to the Constitution except the Twenty-First Amendment has been ratified by voting in state legislatures. In the case of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, the Congress instructed the states to call for ratification by convention rather than by state legislatures. The choice of method may have been decisive. The "wets" in Congress (i.e., those in favor of repealing the 18th Amendment) believed that the repeal amendment would fare better in state conventions than in the conservative-dominated state legislatures.

While there has never been a sufficient number of states calling for a constitutional convention to compel the Congress to convene one, an effort in the 1980s and early 1990s to call a convention for the express purpose of considering a balanced budget amendment nearly succeeded. However, concerns that all aspects of the Constitution would be open for amendment if such a convention were convened caused the effort to fall short.