Congress submits first amendments, Sept. 25, 1789 By: Andrew
Glass September 25, 2009 05:05 AM EST  On this day in 1789, the
First Congress submitted the original 12 amendments to the
Constitution, crafted by Rep. James Madison of Virginia, to the
state legislatures for ratification.  In due course, the states
approved 10 of the 12 proposed amendments, which have become
known as the Bill of Rights, and they were enacted on Dec. 15,
1791. The two remaining amendments were not adopted.  One of
them, which fell one vote shy of approval, set a formula for the
minimum number of House seats as the nation’s population grew.
In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this amendment is
still pending, since no deadline was set for its ratification.
Today, with 50 states in the union, the legislatures of 27 more
states, for a total of 38, would need to ratify the amendment
for it to become part of the Constitution.  Currently, there are
435 House members and six nonvoting delegates from the District
of Columbia and five