For the amendments of earlier date, the first ten and the eleventh, the mode of official notice of adoption was the communication of the fact to Congress by Presidential message. AMENDMENTS HERETOFORE PROPOSED Pursuant to article V of the Constitution twenty-six amendments thereto have been proposed by the Congress; of those proposals, twentyone went into force as amendments to the Constitution; the remaining five were, at various dates from 1789 to 1924, proposed by Congress for ratification by the legislatures of the States. In three cases (the eighteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first amendments), there has been fixed a time limit for the effective ratification of the proposed amendment. In each case the limitation was written as part of the amendment proposed and adopted; section 3 of the twenty-first amendment to the Constitution (which has been quoted above), providing that it shall be "inoperative" unless ratified within seven years from the date of submission, follows generally the wording of the similar limitations of section 3 of the eighteenth amendment, and of section 6 of the twentieth amendment; but in no other instance has there been any express limitation of time for the ratification of an amendment proposed by the Congress. THE PROPOSALS OF 1789 At the first session of the first Congress, by a joint resolution passed on September 25, 1789, there were proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution, numbered respectively from "first" to "twelfth". Ten thereof (those which were in the joint resolution numbered respectively "third" to "twelfth") were ratified by the requisite number of States and stand as the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The two proposed amendments of 1789 which were not ratified by the requisite number of States and which consequently were not adopted were as follows: Article the first.....After the first enumeration required by the first Article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which, the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons. Article the second.....No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. a According to the records of the Department of State, the "first" proposal of 1789 was ratified by ten States and the "second" proposal of 1789 was ratified by six States. In each case ratifications by the legislatures of at least eleven States were necessary to comply with the Constitutional provision "of three fourths of the several States", as the total number of States in the Union had become thirteen prior to the ratification of any of the proposed amendments by more than eight States, and had become fourteen prior to the ratification of any of the proposed amendments by more than nine States. c THE PROPOSAL OF 1810 By a joint resolution passed on May 1, 1810, at the second session of the Eleventh Congress, the following was proposed as an amendment to the Constitution: If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them. At the time of the passage of that joint resolution there were seventeen States in the Union. To these was added Louisiana on April 30, 1812 (act of April 8, 1812, 2 Statutes at Large, 701-704), when the proposed amendment had been ratified by only eleven States. Thus fourteen ratifications (at the least) were requisite. d According to the records of the Department of State the proposed amendment was ratified by the legislatures of twelve States and was rejected (or after consideration was not ratified) by the legislatures of four States (Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and South Carolina). Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. a Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. In the opinion in the case of Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, at page 372, reference is made to the fact that in 1873 the legislature of Ohio passed a joint resolution for the ratification of the "second" proposal of 1789. • By September 25, 1789, the Constitution had been ratified by eleven States; North Carolina ratified the Constitution on November 21, 1789, and Rhode Island on May 29, 1790; Vermont ratified the Constitution on January 10, 1791, and by the act of February 18, 1791 (1 Statutes at Large, 191), became a member of the Union on March 4, 1791. d Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Vermont. Owing to mistaken belief that the proposed amendment had been ratified by the legislature of South Carolina and that ratifications by only thirteen States were required, it was generally thought for a time that the proposed amendment had gone into force; and its text was printed as part of the Constitution in various publications (see House Document No. 353, pt. 2, 54th Cong., 2d sess., 188-189). THE PROPOSAL OF 1861 On the legislative day of March 2, 1861 (but in fact on the morning of Monday, March 4; see Congressional Globe, vol. 30, pp. 1374, 1388, 1403) at the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress a joint resolution was passed proposing the following amendment to the Constitution as article XIII (frequently called the Corwin amendment): No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State. According to the records of the Department of State this proposed amendment was ratified by a Constitutional Convention in the State of Illinois. It appears from official publications of the States of Maryland and Ohio that the proposed amendment was also ratified by the legislatures of those two States (see House Document No. 353, pt. 2, 54th Cong., 2d sess., 363, no. 931). Referring particularly to the four proposed amendments above mentioned, the Supreme Court said, by Mr. Justice Van Devanter, in 1921 (Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, at pp. 374-375): We do not find anything in the Article [V] which suggests that an amendment once proposed is to be open to ratification for all time, or that ratification in some of the States may be separated from that in others by many years and yet be effective. We do find that which strongly suggests the contrary. First, proposal and ratification are not treated as unrelated acts but as succeeding steps in a single endeavor, the natural inference being that they are not to be widely separated in time. 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. These considerations and the general purport and spirit of the Article lead to the conclusion expressed by Judge Jameson1"that an alteration of the Constitution 1 Jameson on Constitutional Conventions, 4th ed., § 585. proposed today has relation to the sentiment and the felt needs of today, and that, if not ratified early while that sentiment may fairly be supposed to exist, it ought to be regarded as waived, and not again to be voted upon, unless a second time proposed by Congress." That this is the better conclusion becomes even more manifest when what is comprehended in the other view is considered; for, according to it, four amendments proposed long ago—two in 1789, one in 1810 and one in 1861-are still pending and in a situation where their ratification in some of the States many years since by representatives of generations now largely forgotten may be effectively supplemented in enough more States to make three-fourths by representatives of the present or some future generation. To that view few would be able to subscribe, and in our opinion it is quite untenable. We conclude that the fair inference or implication from Article V is that the ratification must be within some reasonable time after the proposal. THE PROPOSAL OF 1924 By a joint resolution of Congress of June 2, 1924, passed at the first session of the Sixty-eighth Congress, the following amendment to the Constitution (commonly known as the Child Labor Amendment) was proposed: SECTION 1. The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age. SEC. 2. The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress. According to the records of the Department of State (March 31, 1934) the proposed amendment was rejected by the legislatures of twentysix States (by three in 1924; by twenty in 1925; by two in 1926; and by one in 1927), and was ratified by the legislatures of nineteen States (by one in 1924; by three in 1925; by one in 1927; by one in 1931; and by thirteen in 1933); among those nineteen States are five whose legislatures had previously rejected the proposed amendment. In respect of the remaining eight States no record of action taken appeared at the date mentioned. |