Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution

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The Twenty-seventh Amendment (Amendment XXVII) prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of Congress from taking effect until the start of the next set of terms of office for Representatives. It is the most recent amendment to the United States Constitution. It was submitted by Congress to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, and became part of the United States Constitution in May 7, 1992,^[1] a record-setting period of 202 years, 6 months and 12 days.^[2]

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.^[3]

Background

Several states raised the issue of Congressional salaries as they debated whether or not to ratify the 1787 Constitution. The North Carolina ratifying convention requested the following amendment, among others, be made to the Constitution:

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's ratifying convention recommended the identical amendment. New York's declaration of ratification was accompanied by a similar amendment request:

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.

Proposal and ratification

Proposal by Congress

This amendment to the Constitution was introduced first in the House on June 8, 1789, by Representative James Madison of Virginia. One of a series of proposed Constitutional amendments, it was referred to a committee consisting of one representative from each State. After emerging from committee, the full House debated the issue and on August 24, 1789 passed it and sixteen other articles of amendment. The proposals went next to the Senate, where 26 substantive alterations were made. On September 9, 1789, the Senate approved a culled and consolidated package of twelve articles of amendment.^[4] Nothing was changed in this amendment.

On September 21, 1789, a House–Senate Conference Committee convened to resolve numerous differences between the House and Senate Bill of Rights proposals. On September 24, 1789, the committee issued its report, which finalized 12 Constitutional amendments for the House and Senate to consider. The House agreed to the Conference report that same day. The next day the Senate concurred.^[5]

Ratification by the states

  Ratified amendment, 1789–92

  Ratified amendment, 1873

  Ratified amendment, 1978–91

  Ratified amendment, May 1992¹

  Ratified amendment post-enactment, 1992–95

  Ratified amendment twice (NC: 1789/1989; KY: 1792/1996)

  Haven't ratified amendment

¹The Archivist did not certify the amendment until May 18, 1992, with 40 states listed as ratifying the amendment. Kentucky's then-unknown 1792 ratification would have made it 41 states that had ratified at the time of certification, 3 more than the 38 required for a three-quarters majority.

Twelve constitutional amendments were sent to the states for their consideration on September 25, 1789. Ten of these proposals were ratified fifteen months later and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. One, Article the First is still technically pending before the states.

There is some conflict as to the exact ratification dates of the Twenty-seventh Amendment. In some cases, a state's ratification resolution was signed by legislative officers before that state's second house had acted. In other cases, several governors subsequently "approved" the resolutions, even though gubernatorial action is not required by Article V (which requires ratification only by state legislatures or state conventions). Many state legislative journals are unavailable.^[6]

Under the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), any proposed amendment which has been submitted to the states for ratification and does not specify a ratification deadline may be ratified by the states at any time. In Coleman, the Supreme Court further ruled that the ratification of a constitutional amendment is political in nature—and so not a matter properly assigned to the judiciary.

The following states ratified this article, making it part of the Constitution:

1. Maryland — December 19, 1789
2. North Carolina — December 22, 1789; July 4, 1989^[7]
3. South Carolina — January 19, 1790
4. Delaware — January 28, 1790
5. Vermont — November 3, 1791
6. Virginia — December 15, 1791
7. Kentucky — June 27, 1792; March 21, 1996
8. Ohio — May 6, 1873 (as a means of protest against the 1873 "Salary Grab Act"^[8])
9. Wyoming — March 6, 1978 (as a protest against a congressional pay raise^[9])
10. Maine — April 27, 1983
11. Colorado — April 22, 1984
12. South Dakota — February 21, 1985
13. New Hampshire — March 7, 1985 (After rejection – January 26, 1790^[10])
14. Arizona — April 3, 1985
15. Tennessee — May 28, 1985
16. Oklahoma — July 1, 1985
17. New Mexico — February 14, 1986
18. Indiana — February 24, 1986
19. Utah — February 25, 1986
20. Arkansas — March 13, 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. Alabama — May 5, 1992
38. Missouri — May 5, 1992
39. Michigan — May 7, 1992
    On May 18, 1992, the Archivist of the United States, Don W. Wilson, certified that the amendment's ratification was completed on May 7, 1992, with Michigan being the 38th state to ratify.^[11] The certification was officially proclaimed the next day in the Federal Register.^[12] It later came to light that the Kentucky General Assembly had ratified all 12 amendments during that state's initial month of statehood,^[13] technically making Missouri the 38th state to ratify the amendment and finalize its addition to the Constitution.^[14] Nonetheless, the federal government's official record still holds that Michigan was the 38th state to ratify the amendment.^[6][11][15]

The Twenty-seventh Amendment was also ratified by:

40. New Jersey — May 7, 1992 (After rejection – November 20, 1789^[10])

41. Illinois — May 12, 1992

42. California — June 26, 1992

43. Rhode Island — June 10, 1993^[16] (After rejection – June 7, 1790^[10])

44. Hawaii — April 29, 1994^[16]

45. Washington — April 6, 1995^[16]

Five states have not ratified the Twenty-seventh Amendment: Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Revival of Interest

This proposed amendment was largely forgotten before University of Texas at Austin undergraduate student Gregory Watson wrote a paper on the subject in 1982.^[17] Despite receiving a 'C' grade on his paper by an instructor who deemed his idea 'unrealistic',^[18][19] Watson started a new push for ratification with a letter-writing campaign to state legislatures.^[8]

At the time Watson commenced his campaign in early 1982, he was aware of ratifications by only six states and he erroneously believed that Virginia's 1791 approval was the last action taken within the states. He learned in July 1983 that Ohio had approved it in 1873 and he learned in November 1984 that Wyoming did the same thing in 1978. Further, he did not know until 1997, some five years after ratification was completed, that Kentucky offered its ratification of the amendment in 1792. The first legislature to ratify as a result of Watson's campaign was Maine in April 1983, followed by Colorado in April 1984. Numerous state legislatures followed suit, and the ratification by Michigan on May 7, 1992 provided the 38th state ratification (Kentucky's 1792 ratification having been missed) required for the archivist to certify the amendment.

Affirmation of ratification

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.

The response in Congress was sharp. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia scolded Wilson for certifying the amendment as ratified 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 extremely long lapse of time since the Amendment had been proposed.^[12] Speaker of the House Tom Foley and others called for a legal challenge to the amendment's unusual ratification.

On May 20, 1992, under the authority recognized in Coleman, and in keeping with the precedent first established regarding the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, each house of the 102nd Congress passed its own version of a concurrent resolution agreeing that the amendment was validly ratified, despite the unorthodox period of more than 202 years for the completion of the task.

Twenty-seventh Amendment's certification, National Archives

Cost of living adjustments

Congressional cost of living adjustments (COLA) have been upheld against legal challenges based on this amendment. In Boehner v. Anderson,^[20] the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Twenty-seventh Amendment does not affect annual COLAs. In Schaffer v. Clinton,^[21] the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that receiving such a COLA does not grant members of the Congress standing in federal court to challenge that COLA; the Supreme Court did not hear either case and so has never ruled on this amendment's effect on COLAs.

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: United States Government Printing Office.
•   Includes an interview with Gregory Watson.
• Bernstein. The Sleeper Wakes: The History and Legacy of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.

See also

• List of amendments to the United States Constitution
• List of proposed amendments to the United States Constitution
• United States Bill of Rights

References

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 United States 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.Con.Res. 120
• H.Con.Res. 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)
• Certification of the 27th Amendment at National Archives Online Public Access