How to Amend the Constitution

Preamble of Constitution
Dan Thornberg / EyeEm / Getty Images

Amending the Constitution was never meant to be simple. Although thousands of amendments have been discussed since the original document was approved in 1788, there are now only 27 amendments in the Constitution.


Constitutional amendments are intended to improve, correct, or otherwise revise the original document. The framers knew it would be impossible for the Constitution they were writing to address every situation that might come along.

Ratified in December 1791, the first 10 amendments—The Bill of Rights—list and vow to protect certain rights and freedoms granted to the American people and speak to the demands of the Anti-Federalists among the Founding Fathers by limiting the power of the national government.


Two Methods




Method 1: Congress Proposes an Amendment




Given no official role in the amendment process by Article V, the president of the United States is not required to sign or otherwise approve the amending resolution. Presidents, however, typically express their opinion of proposed amendments and may attempt to persuade Congress to vote for or against them.

States Ratify the Amendment


  • The governor convenes a state ratifying convention.


Congress has passed six amendments that never received ratification by the states. The most recent was to give full voting rights to the District of Columbia, which expired unratified in 1985.

Resurrecting ERA?

Clearly, this method of amending the Constitution can be lengthy and time-consuming. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has stated that ratification must be completed within “some reasonable time after the proposal.”


This is why many have felt the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is dead, even though it now needs only one more state to ratify it to achieve the required 38 states.

The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and 35 states had ratified it by its extended deadline of 1985. However, in 2017 and 2018, two more states ratified it, concerned about the constitutionality of setting those deadlines.

An effort in Virginia to become the 38th state to ratify the ERA failed by a single vote in February 2019. Pundits expected a battle to ensue in Congress over whether to accept the "late" ratifications had Virginia succeeded.

Method 2: The States Demand a Constitutional Convention



Though this more momentous method has never been used, the number of states voting to demand a constitutional amending convention has come close to the required two-thirds on several occasions. The mere threat of being forced to surrender its control of the constitutional amendment process to the states has often prompted Congress to preemptively propose amendments itself.

Although not specifically mentioned in the document, there are five unofficial yet legal ways of changing the Constitution used more often—and sometimes even more controversially—than the Article V amendment process. These include legislation, presidential actions, federal court rulings, actions of the political parties, and simple custom.

Can Amendments Be Repealed?




Most recently, the Second Amendment has come under critical scrutiny. In his opinion piece appearing in The New York Times on March 27, 2018, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens controversially called for the repeal of the Bill of Rights amendment, which guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Stevens argued that it would give more power to people's desire to stop gun violence than the National Rifle Association.