When the Constitution was written and sent out for ratification, several ratifying conventions insisted that a Bill of Rights be added to the original text as amendments. So when the Constitution was ratified, James Madison sat down in 1789 and wrote up a list of twelve proposed amendments that were enacted by Congress and sent off to the states for ratification by three quarters of the states.
Ten of them were quickly ratified and were enacted by 1791. But interestingly there was no time limit on how long states could take to ratify them. And this was not a moot point. In 1992, 203 years after it was first enacted by Congress, the proposed amendment on congressional pay raises finally got ratified by a 38th state and became the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.
So my question is what I asked in the title. This amendment was originally sent out as part of a package alongside the other amendments in the Bill of Rights. Doesn’t that mean it’s part of the Bill of Rights, albeit the slowest part (so far anyway) to be ratified.
Well, did it finally get ratified, or was it resubmitted? And does the technical fact that it was originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights overcome the disruption caused by not maintaining the historical use of the term, i.e., the first ten Amendments to the Constitution?
And, finally, it it really a right? Do people have an actual right to expect their congressional representatives not to be able to modify their own pay? Or is it just something we think is a good idea?
No, it’s from when it was originally submitted. Most amendment proposals have a deadline built in to them - the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, for example, was sent out for ratification in 1978 with the proviso that it expired if it wasn’t ratified by 1985 (which is what happened).
But the first twelve proposed amendments had no such deadline. As I noted ten were ratified within two years. The Congressional Pay Amendment (which was actually the second of the twelve proposals) got seven ratifications between 1789 and 1792 and then it stalled. Ohio ratified it in 1873. Then Wyoming ratified it in 1978, Maine in 1983, and Colorado in 1984. Then the pace really picked up - five more states in 1985, three in 1986, four in 1987, three in 1988, seven in 1989, two in 1990, one in 1991, and then five more in 1992. This put the proposal over the three quarters needed and made it official.
There are four other no-deadline amendments floating around that could conceivably be enacted. Some people are arguing that one, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, actually has been enacted. The Corwin Amendment, which was an attempt in 1861 to avoid secession by giving slavery constitutional protection, was effectively superceeded by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 (although for some reason a Texan politician tried to start a ratification movement in 1963.) The proposed Child Labor Amendment of 1924, which would have given Congress the power to regulate child labor, has been essentially enacted by regular legislation. And the Titles of Nobility Amendment of 1810, which would revoke the citizenship of any American who accepted a foreign title, is a pretty minor issue nobody really cares about, although there are some people still arguing for its enactment.
LN, I am saying NO, the 27th is NOT part of the Bill of Rights. To be part of it, it must have been ratified by 3/4 when a tally of 3/4 ratified any or all of the rest of it.
Since the 3/4 vote did NOT include the 27th, it is not considered an article of the BoR
Where does it say in the constitution ratification process, Article 5, that there could not have been a pick and choose like in the BoR?
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Are you saying that a state, New York for example, could have chosen to ratify most of the Constitution but decided to not ratify Article III because it didn’t like the idea of there being a judicial branch?
Because Article VII states that the Constitution comes into force when it’s been ratified by nine states. No suggestion there that the individual state conventions could pick and choose amongst the articles in the Constitution.
That’s different from Article V, which provides that the Congress can propose individual amendments, which then go to the states for consideration individually.
If we look at Article 7, as linked, you can see the yes and no votes of the delegates of each state’s convention.
Now, the negative votes, even though a majority approved, must have had some reason to vote against the Constitution. I am aware of no history of each vote on record whether all opposed were against all 7 Article’s of just certain ones?
As you noted, the delegates voted “yes” or “no”. Do you have any evidence that anyone voted “Yes to Articles I, II, V, and VII and No to Articles III, IV, and VI”? Or any evidence that anyone was offered the opportunity to vote in this manner?
The text contains all twelve proposed articles not just the ten that were ratified by 1792. And there’s nothing that says “Any of these twelve proposals that gets ratified within five years gets to be called the Bills of Rights.”
I don’t think “the Bill of Rights” is officially defined anywhere, so if people say the 27th Amendment is a part of it, it is. It doesn’t seem like they do, though:
“RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.”
Actually, in re-reading, the implication is that the 27th is part of the bill of rights if it was ratified by three fourths of the legislatures. I originally misconstrued the meaning to be at the time of passage. I’d say reading that the 27th is part of the Bill or Rights.