Category: Constitutional Amendments

America’s legislative branch is a bicameral system meaning our United States Congress is divided into two separate chambers:  1) the U.S. Senate; and 2) the U.S. House of Representatives.  The U.S. Senate is made up of two senators from each state, no matter the size of the state or the population. The House of Representatives, on the other hand, is made up of “no more than 435” (as provided by law), and the states elect members in a manner proportionally representing the population of the 50 states.

Constitutional authority to tax the American people arises out of Article I, Section 8, which granted Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes. . .to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”

The Fifteenth Amendment was the third and final constitutional amendment to be ratified during America’s Reconstruction Era, a 10 to 15-year timeframe beginning in 1865, following the end of the Civil War, a war fought to end slavery in America.

Ratified in the summer of 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was one of three amendments passed during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), the 10-15 year timeframe after the War ended when leaders and thinkers turned their attention to reconstructing a unified nation, abolishing slavery, and establishing civil and legal rights in favor of all persons born or naturalized in the United States. 

The practice of slavery and involuntary servitude is unquestionably one of the greatest wrongs and injustices in the history of the world.  For centuries, nations and territories permitted slavery and advanced a harmful philosophy that socio-demographics such as age, religion, sex, race, ethnicity, etc…determine worthiness.

Ratified in 1804 based on concepts described on March 12, 1788, in Federalist Paper No. 68 entitled, “The Mode of Electing the President”, our Twelfth Amendment modified the original manner in which US Presidents and Vice Presidents were selected pursuant to the US Constitution under Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.

After much debate, the framers of our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments – established a system of limited federal government constrained in a manner that offers vast protections for our God-given inalienable rights of freedom and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Tenth Amendment articulates the principle of federalism, or states’ rights. It states that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and that all other governmental powers are reserved to each state.

The Ninth Amendment stems from a debate about the Bill of Rights itself.  After the Revolutionary War, people organized together to develop a new system of government.  While everyone seemed to agree that the freedoms they had just fought so hard to win needed enduring protections, there was a lack of consensus when it came to developing a system of laws that protected every individual’s God-given freedoms, while at the same time achieved security and order.

The Eighth Amendment prevents the federal government and the states (through application of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment) from imposing unjust pre-trial bail against criminal defendants, inflicting brutal or inequitable sentencing schemes, applying inhumane methods of punishment and requires sentences, including fines and forfeited property, be proportionate to convictions.