The Twenty-Seventh Amendment is the most recent amendment to the Constitution. Its
existence today can be traced to a college student who proposed the idea in a term paper
and was given a C by his professor for the idea.
In 1982, a college student, Gregory Watson, discovered that an amendment to the
Constitution had been ratified by six states by 1792 and could still be added to the
Constitution because Congress had never stipulated a time limit for states to consider it
for ratification. Watson started a self-financed, grassroots campaign to get the
amendment ratified. He wrote letters to state officials, urging them to pass the
amendment.
Maine was the first state to respond to Watson’s campaign, ratifying the amendment in
1983. In 1992, Michigan became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, casting the final
vote needed to make the proposed amendment an actual part of the United States
Constitution.
The amendment that Watson lobbied for states the following: “No law, varying the
compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until
an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”
In short, the Twenty-Seventh Amendment states that a sitting Congress cannot give itself
a raise or cut its pay during its current session. Any pay raise or cut would take effect for
the next Congress.
A. Describe the process of passing a constitutional amendment in Congress.
B. Explain how the states affect the process described in Part (A).
C. The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress but never ratified by the states.
Many other proposed amendments have shared the same fate. Explain how the high bar
in passing amendments, as illustrated in these examples, reflects the Framers’ ideas about
government.