Three related considerations were put forward. Secondly, it is only when there is deemed to be a necessity therefor that amendments are to be proposed, the reasonable implication being that when proposed they are to be considered and disposed of presently.
Thirdly, as ratification is but the expression of the approbation of the people and is to be effective when had in three-fourths of the States, there is a fair implication that it must be sufficiently contemporaneous in that number of States to reflect the will of the people in all sections at relatively the same period, which of course ratification scattered through a long series of years would not do. To that view few would be able to subscribe, and in our opinion it is quite untenable.
One must observe that all the quoted language is dicta, the actual issue in Dillon being whether Congress could include a time limit in the text of a proposed amendment.
Miller, U. The other four Justices in the Court majority thought Congress had complete and sole control over the amending process, subject to no judicial review. After a campaign calling for the resurrection of the proposal, which was originally transmitted to the states as one of the twelve original amendments, enough additional states ratified to make up a three-fourths majority, and the responsible executive official proclaimed the amendment as ratified as both Houses of Congress concurred in resolutions.
Despite the Supreme Court's suggestion, no speedy ratification rule may be extracted from Article V's text, structure or history. The Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice prepared for the White House counsel an elaborate memorandum that disputed all aspects of the Dillon opinion. Both characterizations, as noted above, are correct. Thus, the Court simply assumes that, because proposal and ratification are steps in a single process, the process must be short rather than lengthy; the argument that an amendment should reflect necessity says nothing about the length of time available, in that the more recent ratifying states obviously thought the pay amendment was necessary; and the fact that an amendment must reflect consensus does not so much as intimate contemporaneous consensus.
Accordingly, any interpretation that would introduce confusion must be disfavored. The rule ought to be, echoing Professor Tribe, that an amendment is ratified when three-fourths of the states have approved it. Article V says nothing about time limits, and elsewhere in the Constitution when the Framers wanted to include time limits they did so. The OLC also referenced previous debates in Congress in which Members had assumed this proposal and the others remained viable.
Now that the Amendment has been proclaimed and has been accepted by Congress, where does this development leave the argument over the validity of proposals long distant in time? One may assume that this precedent stands for the proposition that proposals remain viable forever.
It may, on the one hand, stand for the proposition that certain proposals, because they reflect concerns that are as relevant today, or perhaps in some future time, as at the time of transmission to the states, remain open to ratification. Certainly, the public concern with congressional pay made the Twenty-seventh Amendment particularly pertinent.
The other proposal, relating to the number of representatives, might remain viable under this standard, whereas the other proposals would not.
In that latter light, the development is relevant to but not dispositive of the controversy. And, barring some judicial interpretation, that is likely to be where the situation rests. Nothing in the status of the precedent created by the Twenty-seventh Amendment suggests that Congress may not, when it proposes an amendment, include a time limitation either in the text or in the accompanying resolution, simply as an exercise of its necessary and proper power.
Whether Congress may extend a ratification period without necessitating new action by states that have already ratified embroiled Congress, the states, and the courts in argument with respect to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Proponents argued and opponents doubted that the fixing of a time limit and the extending of it were powers committed exclusively to Congress under the political question doctrine and that in any event Congress had power to extend.
Proponents recognized that if the time limit was fixed in the text of the amendment Congress could not alter it because the time limit as well as the substantive provisions of the proposal had been subject to ratification by a number of states, making it unalterable by Congress except through the amending process again. Opponents argued that Congress, having by a two-thirds vote sent the amendment and its authorizing resolution to the states, had put the matter beyond changing by passage of a simple resolution, that states had either acted upon the entire package or at least that they had or could have acted affirmatively upon the promise of Congress that if the amendment had not been ratified within the prescribed period it would expire and their assent would not be compelled for longer than they had intended.
Congress did pass a resolution extending by three years the period for ratification. Litigation followed and a federal district court, finding the issue to be justiciable, held that Congress did not have the power to extend, but before the Supreme Court could review the decision the extended time period expired and mooted the matter.
Freeman , F. Idaho, , prob. Share this page. Follow Ballotpedia. Click here to follow election results! Forty-four states have rules that govern how , in their state, a constitutional convention can be called. The main differences between states in terms of their laws governing constitutional conventions are:. In fourteen states , the question of whether to hold a constitutional convention is automatically referred to a statewide ballot without any requirement for a vote of the state legislature to place the question on the ballot.
One of the fourteen states with a mandatory requirement is Oklahoma , though state officials have declined to place the mandatory measure on the ballot since The legislature may submit to the electorate at any general or special election the question, "Shall there be a convention to propose a revision of or amendments to the Constitution?
Nine states allow the state legislature to refer a question about whether or not to hold a constitutional convention to the ballot, which require voter approval to take place. Once a constitutional convention has been held, the results will typically be put to the electorate for consideration. Voters may be asked to approve a single new or revised constitution, such as what happened in Arkansas in Voters may be asked to approve a set of constitutional amendments, such as happened in Ohio in The first amendment with a time limit was the 18th Amendment Prohibition , proposed in For political reasons, Congress included an arbitrarily chosen seven-year deadline in Section 3.
The amendment was also the first to include a time delay before it would take effect, in that case one year after the date of ratification. The next two proposed amendments, the 19th Amendment Woman Suffrage and the never-ratified Child Labor Amendment, had no time limit attached.
However, beginning with the 20th Amendment, Congress has attached a time limit to the ratification of all proposed amendments. Some of these deadlines were in the language of the amendment itself, thus ratified by the states and not able to be changed. However, some of these deadlines, including the time limit for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, were in the proposing clause of the amendment, not in the language ratified by the state legislatures.
The three-state strategy for ERA ratification was developed following the ratification of the "Madison Amendment" as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution after a ratification period of years. Given that acceptance, some ERA advocates contended that the ERA's ratification period of just over two decades would surely meet the "reasonable" and "sufficiently contemporaneous" standards required by Supreme Court decisions in and Time limits were not attached to proposed amendments until , and Congress demonstrated its belief that it may alter a time limit in a proposing clause by extending the original ERA deadline.
Thus, supporters argued, the 35 existing ratifications should still be legally viable, and Congress likely has the power to adjust or repeal the previous time limit on the ERA, determine whether state ratifications subsequent to are valid, and recognize the ERA as part of the Constitution after three more states ratify. This mode of ratification is getting closer to potential realization.
With the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the state of Nevada in and by the state of Illinois in , one more state is needed to ratify the ERA to achieve the initial 38 states for federal ratification as determined in If one more state ratifies the ERA, the ratification process will move into the courts for determination regarding the constitutionality of the original deadline that was applied to the Equal Rights Amendment.
As the legal article explains, Article V of the U. Congress may set a time limit for state action. Legislatures must return specific materials to show proof of ratification. Step 5. When the requisite number of states ratify a proposed amendment, the archivist of the United States proclaims it as a new amendment to the U. Actual certification is published immediately in the Federal Register and eventually in the United States Statutes-at-Large.
State legislatures often call upon Congress to propose constitutional amendments. While these calls may bring some political pressure to bear, Congress is under no constitutional obligation to respond. The U. Constitution does not contain a provision requiring Congress to submit a proposed amendment upon request by some requisite number of states.
In addition to constitutional amendments proposed by Congress, states have the option of petitioning Congress to call a constitutional convention. Legislatures in two-thirds of states must agree, however.
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