Pending Proposals to Amend the Constitution

Report Outline
Pending Proposals to Amend the Constitution
Summary of Pending Amiendments
Time Required for Ratification

Pending Proposals to Amend the Constitution

Ninety-six resolutions proposing amendments to the Constitution, fifty of which will be pending when Congress reconvenes, were offered In the Senate and House during the first session of the Sixty-Eighth Congress (December 3, 1924–June 7, 1924.) Twenty-two such resolutions were introduced in the Senate by fifteen Senators and seventy-four in the House by fifty-three Representatives.

Twenty-six child labor amendments were offered during the session; five in the Senate and twenty-one in the House. There were many other subjects, as will be seen from the classification on Page 406, upon which more than one amendment was offered. The total number of subjects dealt with in the ninety-six amendatory resolutions was thirty. No previous Congress has had laid before it so many varying proposals for changes in the Constitution.

Increasing Tendency to Amend

As originally adopted, the Constitution contained a pre-amble and seven articles, subdivided into 28 sections. The first ten amendments—known as the Bill of Rights—were submitted to the States by the First Congress. Nine new articles have since been added to the Constitution. Four of these have been adopted within the last fifteen years; whereas only five were adopted in the preceding rone hundred and fifteen years.