The Twenty-Seventh Amendment

The Twenty-Seventh Amendment has the most unusual ratification history of any provision in the Constitution. James Madison drafted it in 1789 as one of twelve proposed amendments sent to the states alongside what became the Bill of Rights. Ten of the twelve were ratified in 1791 and became the first ten amendments. The proposed amendment on representation never passed. The proposed amendment on congressional pay sat at six state ratifications, well short of the three-fourths required, and was effectively forgotten. Madison's original text contained no deadline, so it remained technically pending.

The amendment was revived in the 1980s by Gregory Watson, an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. Watson wrote a term paper arguing that the amendment was still ratifiable. He received a C on the paper. He spent the next decade writing letters to state legislators urging ratification. Public anger over congressional pay raises gave the campaign momentum. State after state ratified. Michigan became the thirty-eighth state on May 7, 1992, providing the three-fourths needed. The amendment was certified the following week, 202 years and seven months after Madison had proposed it.

The text reads: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." The intent is simple. Members of Congress should not be able to vote themselves immediate pay raises. Any change they enact will apply only after voters have had a chance to register their views in the next House election. The amendment has had modest direct effect on congressional behavior. Its larger significance is constitutional. It is a reminder that the document the framers wrote is still amendable, that the ratification process they designed retains the patience to wait centuries when necessary, and that a college student with a typewriter can sometimes still change the Constitution of the United States.