The 17th Amendment — which was passed by Congress on May 13, , and ratified on April 8, — made it so that US senators would be voted into office by direct elections instead of by state legislatures, as set out in Article I, Section 3 of the US Constitution.
This is one of the only substantial changes made to the structure of Congress since it was laid out in the original US Constitution. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. The 18th Amendment enacted the prohibition of manufacturing and selling alcohol, beginning one year after the ratification of the amendment.
It was passed by Congress on December 18, , and ratified on January 16, Prohibition was in effect for 13 years before it was repealed in by the 21st Amendment. Prohibition, history notes, largely backfired. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Before the 19th Amendment existed — it was passed by Congress on June 4, , and ratified on August 18, — Susan B.
Anthony argued that the 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause gave women the right to vote since they had been citizens all along. In Minor v Happersett , the Supreme Court decided that being citizens alone did not give women the right to vote, so the women's suffrage movement worked to get a US Constitutional Amendment passed to give women the right to vote.
Today, women make a major difference in elections and are running for office themselves. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President.
If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission. The 20th Amendment set the beginning and end of presidential terms and Congressional sessions.
It also lays out the order of presidential succession, but that order was later altered by the 25th Amendment. In , Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to be inaugurated in January, as set out by the 20th Amendment, instead of in March, or in April, as George Washington had been.
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition. It was passed by Congress on February 20, , and ratified on December 5, This is the only amendment that repeals a previous amendment and it is the only amendment that was ratified by the state ratifying conventions as opposed to the legislatures of the states.
Read More: 14 things you didn't know about the history of beer. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
The 22nd Amendment — which was passed by Congress on March 21, , and ratified on February 27, — limits presidential terms to two. This is mostly because George Washington decided to retire after just two terms, which set the precedent for the next years of presidents in the United States.
The 22nd Amendment was passed out of fear of a tyrannical president. Prior to the passage of this amendment, Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected to four terms as president, serving from until his death in The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
The 23rd Amendment was passed by Congress June 16, , and ratified on March 29, It allowed the citizens of Washington, DC, to choose electors for presidential elections because, as citizens of a federal district and not a state, DC residents are not citizens of a state. Before this amendment was ratified, DC residents were denied the right to vote for federal public officials. Today, DC residents are still unrepresented in Congress , but they have a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The 24th Amendment was passed by Congress on August 27, , and ratified on January 23, It abolished poll taxes, which had previously been required to vote in elections.
When the US Constitution was first ratified, most states allowed only property owners to vote, but as time went on, many states moved to poll taxes.
At first, that expanded the right to vote because more citizens could pay the poll tax than prove they were property owners. However, poll taxes were brought back as a way to prevent black Americans from voting until the Voting Rights Act of In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. Ratified April 8, The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.
The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
Ratified January 16, Repealed by amendment After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Ratified August 18, The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Ratified January 23, Note: Article I, section 4, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of this amendment. In addition, a portion of the 12th amendment was superseded by section 3. The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
The Constitution as written in did not include a Bill of Rights. The idea of including one was proposed and after brief discussion was dismissed in the final week of the Constitutional Convention. The framers believed they faced more pressing concerns than the protection of civil rights and liberties, most notably keeping the fragile union together in the light of internal unrest and external threats.
Article I, Section 9, limits the congressional power in three ways: prohibiting the passage of bills of attainder, prohibiting ex post facto laws, and limiting the congressional ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Prohibition of such laws means that the U. Congress cannot simply punish people who are unpopular or seem to be guilty of crimes. An ex post facto law has a retroactive effect: it can be used to punish crimes that were not crimes at the time they were committed, or it can be used to increase the severity of punishment after the fact.
Finally, the writ of habeas corpus in our common-law legal system demands that a neutral judge decide whether someone has been lawfully detained. Particularly in times of war, or in response to threats against national security, the government has held suspected enemy agents without access to civilian courts. For example, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln detained suspected Confederate saboteurs and sympathizers in Union-controlled states and attempted to have them tried in military courts, leading the Supreme Court to rule in Ex parte Milligan that the government could not bypass the civilian court system in states where it was operating.
Hence, there have been times in our history when national security issues trumped individual liberties. Richard Quirin and seven other trained German saboteurs had once lived in the United States and had secretly returned in June Upon their capture, a military commission shown here convicted the men—six of them received death sentences.
Ex parte Quirin set a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States. Credit: Library of Congress. Debate continues over these issues. The Federalists reasoned that the limited set of enumerated powers of Congress, along with the limitations on those powers in Article I, Section 9, would suffice, and no separate bill of rights was needed.
Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius in Federalist No. For that matter, the Articles of Confederatio n had not included a specific listing of rights either.
There is the same reason, therefore, that the exercise of power, in this case, should be restrained within proper limits, as in that of the state governments. Two centuries of experience suggests the Anti-Federalists may have been correct; while the states retain a significant importance, the scope and powers of the national government are much broader today than in —likely beyond even the imaginings of the Federalists themselves. James Madison ultimately delivered on this promise by proposing a package of amendments in the First Congress.
These derived from the Declaration of Rights in the Virginia state constitution, ratification convention suggestions and other sources, which were extensively debated in both houses of Congress and ultimately proposed as twelve separate amendments for ratification. Ten of the amendments were successfully ratified by the requisite 75 percent of the states and became known as the Bill of Rights.
In this case, which dealt with Fifth Amendment property rights, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the Bill of Rights applied only to federal government actions. Influenced by his mentor, Salmon P. The prevailing view on the limited application of the Bill of Rights to the states changed in the wake of the Civil War.
Angered by these actions, members of the Radical Republican faction in Congress demanded the laws be overturned. In the short term, they advocated suspending civilian government in most of the southern states and replacing politicians who had enacted the black codes. Long-term they proposed two constitutional amendments to guarantee the rights of freed slaves on an equal standing with whites; these rights became the Fourteenth Amendment, dealing with civil liberties and rights in general, and the Fifteenth Amendment protecting the right to vote in particular.
But, the right to vote did not yet apply to women or to Native Americans. Civil liberties were significantly clarified by the Fourteenth Amendment in To use an example from today, the punishment for speeding by an out-of-state driver cannot be more severe than the punishment for an in-state driver. Legal scholars and the courts have extensively debated the meaning of this privileges or immunities clause over the years; some have argued it was supposed to extend the entire Bill of Rights or at least the first eight amendments to the states while others have argued that only some rights are extended.
Roe that the clause protects the right to travel from one state to another. Chicago ruling that this clause applied the individual right to bear arms to the states. The due process clause is the second provision of the Fourteenth Amendment applying the Bill of Rights to the states. For example, in Sherbert v. Verner , the Supreme Court ruled that states could not deny unemployment benefits to an individual who turned down a job because it required working on the Sabbath.
Beginning in , the Supreme Court established that various Bill of Rights protections of fundamental liberties must be upheld by the states, even if their state constitutions and laws do not protect them as fully as the Bill of Rights does—or at all. This means there has been a process of selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights into state practices; in other words, the Constitution effectively inserts parts of the Bill of Rights into state laws and constitutions, even though it does not do so explicitly.
When cases arise to clarify particular issues and procedures, the United States Supreme Court decides whether state laws violate the Bill of Rights and are therefore unconstitutional.
For example, under the Fifth Amendment a person can be tried in federal court for a felony—a serious crime—only after a grand jury issues an indictment confirming it is reasonable to try the person for that crime.
Even after ratification of the 19th Amendment, many women of color were subject to various types of voter suppression until passage of the Voting Rights Act of Before ratification of the 20th Amendment, 13 months had passed between the election of a new Congress and the time it held its first meeting.
It also moved up the inauguration of the president by six weeks, moving it to January The 20th Amendment was quickly proposed, passed and ratified during the Great Depression , when many people regretted that Franklin D.
Roosevelt had to wait four months to succeed the unpopular Herbert Hoover. As the temperance movement still held sway in many states, supporters of the 21st Amendment realized that state legislators could be subject to political pressure, and opted to follow the convention route instead. Though term limits were not a part of the Constitution, later generations of Americans believed that George Washington set a valuable precedent when he made the decision to step away from the presidency after two terms in Several later presidents flirted with the idea of a third term, but Franklin D.
Roosevelt was the first to follow through. Guiding the nation through the tumultuous era spanning the Depression and World War II , FDR won an unprecedented four presidential elections , but died several months after his fourth term began in Two years later, Congress began the process of passing the 22nd Amendment, which limited future presidents to two terms.
Since the District of Columbia became the seat of the U. The 23rd Amendment addressed this, giving D. While the original version of the amendment approved by the Senate would have granted the District representation in the House of Representatives, the House rejected this idea.
In , Congress adopted another proposed amendment that provided for D. Starting in the years following Reconstruction , many white-dominated Southern legislatures enacted poll taxes as a method of disenfranchising Black voters.
Congress repeatedly debated legislation to eliminate poll taxes starting in , but none passed. Though only five states still had such taxes in place by , supporters of the civil rights movement saw their abolition as an important objective in combating racism and discrimination against Black Americans. The 24th Amendment applied only to federal elections, and after its ratification several southern states tried to maintain poll taxes for separately held state elections. In Harper v. Vice President Lyndon B.
After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November , a movement grew to clarify the vague procedures that had existed around presidential disability and the right of succession. It also allows the president to declare a temporary inability to serve—as in the case of undergoing surgery—and resume powers when able. The fourth and most controversial section, which has never been invoked, empowers the vice president to become acting president if the president is determined by the vice president and the majority of the Cabinet, backed by Congress to be unable to perform the duties of the office.
The long-running debate over whether young Americans should be asked to risk their lives fighting for their country before they were given the right to vote intensified during the Vietnam War. In , Congress passed a statute lowering the age of voting in all federal, state and local elections to When Oregon challenged that law, the Supreme Court sided with the state, ruling that Congress only had jurisdiction over federal elections.
With a groundswell of popular support, the 26th Amendment was passed and ratified in record time, lowering the legal voting age to 18 in all U.
By prohibiting any law raising or lowering the salaries of members of Congress from taking effect before the start of a new session of Congress begins, the 27th Amendment aims to reduce corruption in the legislative branch of the federal government. Originally introduced by Madison, it was left in limbo when the first 10 amendments were ratified in and largely forgotten by the late 20th century, when Gregory Watson, a college student in Texas, read about it in a class on American government.
Watson later rallied enough popular support and resentment of Congress to get the requisite three-quarters of U. Constitutional Amendment Process. Federal Register, National Archives. Jack N.
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