Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

United States of America
This article is part of the series: United States Constitution
Original text of the Constitution
Preamble Articles of the Confederation I ∙ II ∙ III ∙ IV ∙ V ∙ VI ∙ VII
Amendments to the Constitution
Bill of Rights I ∙ II ∙ III ∙ IV ∙ V VI ∙ VII ∙ VIII ∙ IX ∙ X Subsequent Amendments XI ∙ XII ∙ XIII ∙ XIV ∙ XV XVI ∙ XVII ∙ XVIII ∙ XIX ∙ XX XXI ∙ XXII ∙ XXIII ∙ XXIV ∙ XXV XXVI ∙ XXVII
Other countries ·  Law Portal  view • talk • edit

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

The Twenty-seventh Amendment (Amendment XXVII) is the most recent Amendment to the United States Constitution, having been ratified in 1992, 202½ years after its initial submission in 1789.

Contents 1 Text 2 Background 3 Proposal and ratification 3.1 The first hundred years 3.2 Ratification completed 3.3 Certification and Congressional acceptance of ratification 3.4 Ratification dates 3.5 States that did not ratify 4 Interpretation 5 Sources 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Text

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

[edit] Background

The Twenty-seventh Amendment provides that any change in Congressional salaries may only take effect after the beginning of the next term of office for Representatives begins. Sometimes called the "Congressional Compensation Amendment of 1789", the "Congressional Pay Amendment", and the "Madison Amendment", it was intended to serve as a restraint on the power of Congress to set its own salary—an obvious potential for conflict-of-interest. However since its 1992 adoption this amendment has not hindered members of Congress from receiving nearly annual pay raises; Characterized as "cost-of-living adjustments" (COLAs) rather than as pay raises in the traditional sense of the term. The federal courts have ruled in cases brought under the amendment that a COLA is not the same thing as a pay raise. Hence members of Congress have been able to obtain increases in compensation without triggering the restrictions which this amendment seeks to impose. In the case of Schaffer v. Clinton (2001), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Twenty-seventh Amendment does not affect annual COLAs. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this specific issue.

This amendment was actually suggested by a number of states. During the 1788 North Carolina convention assembled to consider the original Constitution itself, the following amendment, among others, was requested of Congress:

The laws ascertaining the compensation of senators and representatives, for their services, shall be postponed in their operation until after the election of representatives immediately succeeding the passing thereof; that excepted which shall first be passed on the subject.

Virginia in its 1788 ratification convention recommended the identical language that North Carolina had suggested. New York in its 1788 ratification convention also urged Congress to consider this wording:

That the Compensation for the Senators and Representatives be ascertained by standing law; and that no alteration of the existing rate of Compensation shall operate for the Benefit of the Representatives, until after a subsequent Election shall have been had.

In 1816 more than a quarter century after Congress had officially submitted the amendment (and eleven others) to the state legislatures for consideration the Massachusetts General Court expressed its desire for an amendment to the Constitution worded almost exactly as it was offered by Congress in 1789. The legislation embodying the recommendation was reportedly approved by the Massachusetts House of Representatives on a vote of 138 to 29. Sometime in December 1816 or early 1817 the Kentucky General Assembly did the same thing; and in 1817 or January 1818 Tennessee's lawmakers followed suit.

[edit] Proposal and ratification

[edit] The first hundred years

Presented in the United States House of Representatives by Representative James Madison of Virginia—future fourth President of the United States—this amendment was the second of the twelve Constitutional amendments originally submitted to the state legislatures for ratification by the 1st Congress on September 25, 1789, the last ten of which became the United States Bill of Rights by December 15, 1791.

From 1789 to 1791, the compensation proposal was ratified by legislators in only six states—Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Vermont and Virginia—out of the ten then required. As more states entered the Union, the ratification threshold increased. In 1873, more than 80 years after Congress offered it to the nation's state lawmakers, the Ohio General Assembly ratified the compensation amendment as a means of protest against the "Salary Grab Act". The "Salary Grab Act" not only provided for a Congressional pay raise, but made that raise retroactive.

[edit] Ratification completed

The proposed amendment was again largely forgotten until 1982, when University of Texas at Austin student Gregory Watson rediscovered it. The push for ratification began in earnest and the amendment was finally ratified a decade later on May 5, 1992, when it was approved by the legislature of Alabama, the 38th state to assent, there being 50 states in the Union at the time. At that point, it became the Constitution's Twenty-seventh Amendment. Under the 1939 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Coleman v. Miller, any proposed amendment for which Congress does not specify a ratification deadline remains pending business before the states and the states may continue to consider that amendment regardless of that amendment's age. In Coleman, the Supreme Court further ruled that the ratification of a constitutional amendment is political in nature—and not a matter properly assigned to the judiciary.

For quite some time, it had been erroneously believed that ratification on May 7, 1992, by the Michigan Legislature added the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, when the June 1792 ratification of all twelve amendments by the Kentucky General Assembly during that commonwealth's initial month of statehood later came to light, it was quickly realized that the Twenty-seventh Amendment's incorporation into the Constitution was actually finalized two days earlier than previously thought—and by the state (Alabama) whose legislature had acted immediately before Michigan's. Possibly unaware of the ratification actions taken in 1792, Kentucky lawmakers ceremonially approved the amendment a second time, nearly 204 years later in 1996, and almost four years after the amendment had already been made part of the Constitution. In 1989, the North Carolina General Assembly likewise re-ratified the amendment, having first adopted it two centuries earlier in 1789.

[edit] Certification and Congressional acceptance of ratification

On May 18, 1992, the Amendment was officially certified by Archivist of the United States Don W. Wilson. On May 19, 1992, it was printed in the Federal Register, together with the certificate of ratification.^[1]

Notwithstanding the Coleman v. Miller decision, Speaker of the House Tom Foley and others called for a legal challenge to the amendment's irregular ratification. However, the Coleman ruling made clear that only the Congress has the authority to determine whether an amendment has—or has not—been properly made part of the Constitution. The courts would not involve themselves in such a "political question", the justices asserted. Because Congressional opposition to ratification would be perceived as little more than self-interest, reaction on Capitol Hill was silenced.

In certifying that the amendment had been validly ratified, the Archivist of the United States had acted under statutory authority granted to his office by the Congress under Title 1, section 106b of the United States Code. Title 1, section 106b of the United States Code reads:

“

"Whenever official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration that any amendment proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published, with his certificate, specifying the States by which the same may have been adopted, and that the same has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States".

”

Despite that, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia scolded Wilson for having certified the amendment without Congressional approval. Although Byrd supported Congressional acceptance of the amendment, he contended that Wilson had deviated from "historic tradition" by not waiting for Congress to consider the validity of the ratification, given the 202½ year lapse since the Amendment had been proposed.^[1]

In accordance with the Coleman ruling—and in keeping with the precedent first established in the 1868 ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment—both houses of the 102nd Congress, on May 20, 1992, acting separately, adopted concurrent resolutions agreeing that the amendment was indeed validly ratified, despite the unorthodox period of 202½ years for the completion of the task. Neither body, however, adopted the concurrent resolution of the other.

[edit] Ratification dates

The Congress proposed this amendment on September 25, 1789.^[2] The following states ratified the amendment:

1. Maryland (December 19, 1789)
2. North Carolina (December 22, 1789, re-ratified in 1989)
3. South Carolina (January 19, 1790)
4. Delaware (January 28, 1790)
5. Vermont (November 3, 1791)
6. Virginia (December 15, 1791)
7. Kentucky (1792, re-ratified in 1996)
8. Ohio (May 6, 1873)
9. Wyoming (March 6, 1978)
10. Maine (April 27, 1983)
11. Colorado (April 22, 1984)
12. South Dakota (February 21, 1985)
13. New Hampshire (March 7, 1985)
14. Arizona (April 3, 1985)
15. Tennessee (May 23, 1985)
16. Oklahoma (July 10, 1985)
17. New Mexico (February 14, 1986)
18. Indiana (February 24, 1986)
19. Utah (February 25, 1986)
20. Arkansas (March 6, 1987)
21. Montana (March 17, 1987)
22. Connecticut (May 13, 1987)
23. Wisconsin (July 15, 1987)
24. Georgia (February 2, 1988)
25. West Virginia (March 10, 1988)
26. Louisiana (July 7, 1988)
27. Iowa (February 9, 1989)
28. Idaho (March 23, 1989)
29. Nevada (April 26, 1989)
30. Alaska (May 6, 1989)
31. Oregon (May 19, 1989)
32. Minnesota (May 22, 1989)
33. Texas (May 25, 1989)
34. Kansas (April 5, 1990)
35. Florida (May 31, 1990)
36. North Dakota (March 25, 1991)
37. Missouri (May 5, 1992)
38. Alabama (May 5, 1992)

Ratification was completed on May 5, 1992. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:

1. Michigan (May 7, 1992)
2. New Jersey (May 7, 1992)
3. Illinois (May 12, 1992)
4. California (June 26, 1992)
5. Rhode Island (June 10, 1993)
6. Hawaii (April 26, 1994)
7. Washington (August 12, 1995)

[edit] States that did not ratify

1. Massachusetts
2. Mississippi
3. Nebraska
4. New York
5. Pennsylvania

[edit] Interpretation

Only three federal court decisions have interpreted the amendment:

• Boehner v. Anderson, 809 F. Supp. 138 (D.D.C. 1992), aff'd, 30 F.3d 156 (D.C. Cir. 1994);
• Operation Rescue Nat'l v. United States, 975 F. Supp. 92 (D. Mass. 1997), aff'd, 147 F.3d 68 (1st Cir. 1998); and
• Schaffer v. Clinton, 54 F. Supp. 2d 1014 (D. Colo. 1999), aff'd on other grounds, 240 F.3d 878 (10th Cir. 2001).

[edit] Sources

• Congressional Research Service. (1992).
• The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. (Senate Document No. 103–6). (Johnny H. Killian and George A. Costello, Eds.). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Dean, John (2002). "The Telling Tale of the Twenty Seventh Amendment". Findlaw's Writ. Eagan, Minnesota: Findlaw. Retrieved on August 27, 2005. Includes an interview with Gregory Watson.
• Bernstein. The Sleeper Wakes: The History and Legacy of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• United States Bill of Rights
• List of amendments to the United States Constitution
• List of proposed amendments to the United States Constitution
• Unsuccessful attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution

[edit] External links

• The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation is available at:
  • GPO Access - Official version of the document at the U.S. Government Printing Office.
  • FindLaw – FindLaw's version of the official document; incorporates 1996 and 1998 supplements into text, but does not include prefatory material included in the official version.
• National Archives: Twenty seventh Amendment
• S 298
• SConRes 120
• HConRes 320
• Memorandum Opinions for the Counsel to the President opining that the Archivist was required to certify the Amendment as part of the Constitution (May 13, 1992; November 2, 1992)

v • d • e United States Constitution Text (at Wikisource): Preamble and Articles · Bill of Rights · Subsequent Amendments Formation History · Articles of Confederation · Mount Vernon Conference · Annapolis Convention · Philadelphia Convention · Virginia Plan · New Jersey Plan · Connecticut Compromise · Three-Fifths Compromise · Signatories · Federalist Papers (list) · Massachusetts Compromise Articles Preamble · One · Two · Three · Four · Five · Six · Seven Amendments Bill of Rights · Ratified · Proposed · Unsuccessful · Conventions to propose · State ratifying conventions Clauses Appointments · Appropriations · Case or Controversy · Citizenship · Commerce · Compact · Confrontation · Contract · Copyright and Patent · Due Process · Emolument · Equal Protection · Establishment · Exceptions · Ex post facto · Extradition · Free Exercise · Fugitive Slave · Full Faith and Credit · General Welfare  · Guarantee · Impeachment · Militia · Natural–born citizen · Necessary-and-Proper · No Religious Test · Origination · Postal · Presentment · Privileges and Immunities · Privileges or Immunities · Speech or Debate · Supremacy · Suspension · Taxing and Spending · Territorial · Treaty · Trial by Jury · Vesting · War Powers Interpretation Theory · Concurrent powers · Congressional enforcement · Double jeopardy · Dormant Commerce Clause · Enumerated powers · Executive privilege · Incorporation of the Bill of Rights · Nondelegation doctrine · Preamble · Preemption · Separation of church and state · Separation of powers