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An amendment is a formal or official change made to a law, contract, constitution, or other legal document. It is based on the verb to amend, which means to change for better. Amendments can add, remove, or update parts of these agreements. They are often used when it is better to change the document than to write a new one. [1]
A constitutional amendment (or constitutional alteration) is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity.Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly altering the text.
A convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, also referred to as an Article V Convention, state convention, [1] or amendatory convention is one of two methods authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed: on the Application of two thirds of the State legislatures (that is, 34 of the 50 ...
The view that the Article V amendment process is the only legitimate vehicle for bringing about constitutional change is, as pointed out by constitutional law scholar Joel K. Goldstein, "challenged by numerous widely-accepted judicial decisions that have introduced new meaning into constitutional language by departing from original intentions ...
The second way to propose an amendment is by two-thirds “…of the several States,” which “…call a Convention for proposing Amendments….” The first process is by far the more popular.
The first ten amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states.
Among these, Amendments 1–10 are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, and Amendments 13–15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Excluding the Twenty-seventh Amendment , which was pending before the states for 202 years, 225 days, the longest pending amendment that was successfully ratified was the Twenty-second Amendment , which ...
The United States Constitution and its amendments comprise hundreds of clauses which outline the functioning of the United States Federal Government, the political relationship between the states and the national government, and affect how the United States federal court system interprets the law. When a particular clause becomes an important ...