Categorizing Amendments to the Constitution

The twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution can roughly be categorized into six broad categories. The first ten amendments are collectively known as the Bill of Rights. For the purposes of this categorization, the Twenty-seventh Amendment can be included with the first ten because it was proposed by Madison at the same time as the first ten amendments. It is also appropriate to include it with the first ten because it was intended to provide the people protection from unscrupulous elected officials who might abuse their offices for financial gain.

A second set of amendments specifically addresses the scope of the national government's authority. The Eleventh Amendment was proposed and ratified in response to a Supreme Court decision regarding sovereign immunity. The Sixteenth Amendment authorized the national government to directly tax the incomes of individuals.

Three Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth—were proposed and ratified shortly after the Civil War and were aimed at extending civil rights and liberties to former slaves. Another five amendments—the Twelfth, Seventeenth, Twentieth, Twenty-second, and Twenty-fifth Amendments—have made changes in methods of electing, or in setting terms for, presidents, vice presidents and senators. Four amendments, including the Nineteenth, the Twenty-fourth, and the Twenty-sixth (the Fifteenth Amendment can also be included in this category), expanded the number of persons eligible to vote in national elections. Two amendments—the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the consumption of alcohol; and the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment—canceled each other out.