27. Amendment to the United States Constitution
The 27th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America reads:
No law that alters the payment of Senator and House members' services will come into effect until a new House election has taken place.
Originally adopted by Congress as the 2nd amendment to the constitution in 1789 and forwarded to the federal states at the time, it only achieved the required parliamentary approval of three-quarters of all federal states more than 200 years later, in May 1992 .
content
This Amendment to the Constitution of the United States determined that the changes in the diets of members of Congress come into force until after the next election. This article should serve to limit the power of Congress to set its own diets as it presents an obvious conflict of interest. However, there are surcharges to compensate for increased living costs. The federal courts have ruled that these are not considered diet increases.
First versions of this article had been proposed by the states of North Carolina , Virginia and New York as early as 1788 .
Ratification process
In the House of Representatives , this constitutional amendment was proposed by MP James Madison , who would later become the fourth President of the United States . The proposal was then passed as the second of twelve amendments to the constitution on September 25, 1789 by the 1st Congress and submitted to the states for ratification . While ten of the twelve proposals had been ratified by a sufficient number of states in 1791 to become part of the constitution as the Bill of Rights , the first and second of the proposed amendments failed to achieve the necessary ¾ majority, which at that time was eleven states . With the number of states, the required minimum number increased accordingly.
After the amendment was adopted by only six states ( Maryland , North Carolina, South Carolina , Delaware , Vermont and Virginia) from 1789 to 1791 , the proposal was largely forgotten. As Gregory Watson, a student at the University of Texas at Austin , found out in a seminar paper in 1982, Ohio had Ohio in 1873 and Wyoming in 1978 in protest against the doubling of the presidential wages, known as the "Salary Grab", and a significant increase in the wages of members of parliament as seventh and eighth state ratified the proposal. Watson decided to campaign for ratification of the proposal by other states. Starting with Maine and Colorado , more and more states were won over to this constitutional amendment in the following decade. On May 18, 1992, the archivist of the United States finally confirmed that the necessary ¾ majority had been achieved, with the constitutional amendment becoming part of the constitution as the 27th Amendment. This reaffirmed on 20 May 1992, both the House of Representatives and the Senate by concurrent resolution .
Almost fifty years earlier, the Supreme Court had decided that ratification of additional articles without an explicit expiry date could take place at any time and that it would never expire.
Dates of ratification
The dates of the ratification by the individual states:
- Maryland December 19, 1789
- North Carolina December 22, 1789
- South Carolina January 19, 1790
- Delaware January 28, 1790
- Vermont on November 3, 1791
- Virginia December 15, 1791
- Ohio May 6, 1873
- Wyoming on March 6, 1978
- Maine on April 27, 1983
- Colorado April 22, 1984
- South Dakota on February 21, 1985
- New Hampshire on March 7, 1985
- Arizona on April 3, 1985
- Tennessee on May 23, 1985
- Oklahoma on July 10, 1985
- New Mexico on February 14, 1986
- Indiana on February 24, 1986
- Utah on February 25, 1986
- Arkansas on March 13, 1987
- Montana on March 17, 1987
- Connecticut on May 13, 1987
- Wisconsin on July 15, 1987
- Georgia on February 2, 1988
- West Virginia on March 10, 1988
- Louisiana on July 7, 1988
- Iowa on February 9, 1989
- Idaho on March 23, 1989
- Nevada on April 26, 1989
- Alaska on May 6, 1989
- Oregon on May 19, 1989
- Minnesota on May 22, 1989
- Texas on May 25, 1989
- Kansas on April 5, 1990
- Florida on May 31, 1990
- North Dakota on March 25, 1991
- Missouri on May 5, 1992
- Alabama on May 5, 1992
- Michigan on May 7, 1992
- New Jersey on May 7, 1992
- Illinois on May 12, 1992
- California on June 26, 1992
- Rhode Island on June 10, 1993
Individual evidence
- ↑ Resolution of the House of Representatives of May 20, 1992
- ↑ Resolution of the Senate of May 20, 1992
- ↑ Footnote to the 27th additional article with ratification dates at findlaw.com
