Every Amendment After The Bill Of Rights Explained

The 11th Amendment began with a 1793 Supreme Court case. Robert Farquhar had sold the state (then colony) of Georgia war materiel during the American Revolution, but never received payment. The executor of Farquhar's estate, Alexander Chisholm, sued Georgia for payment in 1792. Because the lawsuit involved a private individual from another state (here, South Carolina), there were questions over jurisdiction, so it went to the Supreme Court in Chisholm v. Georgia.

As noted in the opinion, Georgia did not appear before the court, which threatened to default the case to the plaintiff. The state reasoned that as a sovereign entity, it was immune to lawsuits in federal court originating from other states or their citizens, unless it explicitly waived its sovereign immunity and consented to the lawsuit.

The case was an early harbinger of the states' rights debate – a question of whether states were federal subjects or independent entities alongside the federal government. The court concluded it was the former. It cited Article III, Sec. 2.1 of the Constitution in Chisholm's favor, which states that the judiciary's authority would extend "to Controversies ... between a State and Citizens of another State." Only Justice James Iredell (above) dissented in Georgia's favor.

In response, Congress validated Iredell with the 11th Amendment, which overturned the decision and forbade the federal judiciary from involving itself in lawsuits against states by citizens of other states. The amendment does have exceptions, however. Congress may abrogate a state's immunity, while citizens may also sue officials acting unconstitutionally on behalf of a state in federal court through the ex parte Young doctrine.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution came in 1865 on the heels of abolitionism and the American Civil War. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which contrary to popular belief, only freed slaves in some militarily-occupied areas of the Confederacy. Areas such as the "border states" – slave states that had remained loyal to Washington – and the City of New Orleans were exempt.

When the surrender at Appomattox officially ended the Civil War on April 9, 1865, slavery was still legal and the question of whether Congress could ban it was not settled. But that question had caused the antebellum firestorm over slavery in the first place. Lincoln himself believed that Congress could not end it, hence his 1860 promise to respect slavery in the South. The Confederate Constitution showed a similar concern in Article I, Sec. 9.4, which forbade the Confederate Congress from forbidding slavery.

To resolve the issue, The Republican party proposed the 13th Amendment, which despite roadblocks in the House, passed in December 1865. It abolished "slavery [and] involuntary servitude" in all U.S. jurisdictions. But it contained one exception: prisoners could still be sentenced to involuntary labor as restitution for crimes committed – a problem that prison reform groups have argued constitutes slavery by another name.

While the amendment abolished all "involuntary servitude," U.S. law makes it clear that it applies to human bondage – as in one human owning another. A U.S. citizen, for instance, cannot invoke the 13th Amendment to avoid a military draft or jury duty – no matter how much he might view these as "involuntary servitude."

Although African Americans became citizens under the 14th Amendment in 1868, they did not receive voting rights in any state until two years later with the 15th Amendment (1870). It banned racial discrimination or discrimination based on status as a former slave at the polls. The Enforcement Act of 1870 outlined penalties for violators of the amendment, including a $500 fine payable to the offended party.

The amendment might seem unnecessary because today, citizenship and voting go hand-in-hand. But in postbellum America, states had far more leeway to set their own eligibility requirements. Race was not a protected class, so racial restrictions were technically legal. The 15th Amendment resolved this problem, but opened up a new set of problems concerning workarounds and legal challenges.

Even though the 15th Amendment appeared to give African American men an inalienable right to vote, in conjunction with the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection and rights for all citizens, there were still question of whether voting was even a right. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1876 case Reese v. U.S. that the 15th Amendment did not give the right to vote. It only forbade racial discrimination against potential voters who met other criteria, meaning states could exclude African Americans through proxy measures.

In the years following the ruling, states passed a flurry of laws designed to keep African American and poor white voters off the rolls. These included poll taxes that people could not afford, or difficult literacy tests that the uneducated could not pass. These would not be definitely overturned until the 24th Amendment in 1964.

The 17th Amendment, proposed in 1911 and ratified in 1913, moved America away from a federal republican model of governance to a more democratic one through the direct election of senators by majority popular vote.

Before 1913, state legislatures appointed senators to represent state interests, namely by blocking overreaching federal laws. This ensured states could cancel out federal power and popular opinion, preventing America from becoming the Founders' worst fear – a pure democracy. George Mason Law Prof. Todd Zywicki argued the 17th Amendment undercut American federalism by removing a key check on federal power was lost because states could no longer use their senators to block federal legislation detrimental to state interests because they answered to the public.

Yale Law Prof. David Schleicher argued that the amendment was necessary because the Founders' original framework quickly collapsed due to partisanship, corruption, and politics. Although state legislatures appointed senators, the people elected their state legislators, who appointed senators reflecting public opinion. Special interests also factored in, tilting selection towards candidates who would favor their bottom lines. Schleicher argued that this "election-by-proxy" unnecessarily complicated matters when direct election would yield similar results.

Both scholars acknowledge that the appeal to direct democracy made the amendment widely popular. People supported it as a way to bypass corruption inside state legislatures by allowing the people to counterbalance the influence of special interests. Funnily, special interests and political machines supported it too, because they could game elections through increased turnout in cities they controlled. It went through, and still provides the framework for electing senators today.

The 19th Amendment, which banned sex-based voter discrimination, was the natural result of Reconstruction-era constitutional reform. The 15th Amendment's ban on racial discrimination at the polls theoretically extended suffrage to most men as long as they met state requirements. Suffragettes argued that if voting was a citizen's right, then under the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizens' rights, women also had the right to vote.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1874 case Minor v. Happersett that although women were citizens under the 14th Amendment, citizenship did not confer automatic voting rights, which were set at the state level. Since voting was not a constitutional right, states could discriminate on sex – just as they had on race before the 15th Amendment.

In response, suffragettes lobbied to change state-level laws, finding the most success in the western states, nine of which granted female suffrage by 1912. But the easy national solution was a constitutional amendment banning gender discrimination at the polls. That year, suffragettes gained a powerful ally when former President Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party added women's suffrage to their 1912 platform.

With Teddy's endorsement, women's suffrage eventually got its amendment, which went the states in 1919-1920. As the end of the ratification process neared, Tennessee had yet to cast its decision. With the statehouse deadlocked, the tie-breaking vote fell to Harry Burn, an opponent of women's suffrage. But legend tells that his mother begged him to support the amendment. Out of filial piety, he voted yes, giving women the right to vote. His detractors accused him of selling out his vote.

The 21st Amendment, passed in 1933, ended Prohibition, which had been a total failure and made America's cities more dangerous. Congressmen and ordinary Americans flouted it, while organized crime got rich off of it. This brought two serious problems for American health and the rule of law.

The first problem was poorly-distilled illegal liquor containing methanol, which caused blindness and death when consumed. Time Magazine reported in 1927 that the U.S. government used this to scare Americans off drinking and into obedience of the 18th Amendment by spiking illegal liquor with the chemical. The consequences were thousands of American deaths.

Then there was organized crime. While 19th-century mafias focused on the usual illegal street rackets of prostitution, gambling, and protection, Prohibition offered gangsters the opportunity to go international, importing illegal alcohol from abroad for lucrative American black-market sales. Thus, corruption skyrocketed as mafias paid off everyone from customs officers to police and local officials to look the other way. By the late 1920s, virtually every Chicago public and law enforcement official, for instance, was in Al Capone's pocket. For yearly bribes totaling $250,000, Capone raked in $100,000,000.

The feds called it quits on Prohibition with the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment. Surprisingly, Utah, formerly a bastion of Prohibition due to the presence of the Latter-Day Saints Church, got the country over the three-fourths barrier to repeal. Although opposed to alcohol, many members of the church supported it, hoping legal drinking would pull the rug out from under organized crime. President Franklin Roosevelt signed off, and America celebrated.

The 23rd Amendment is a bit of a mystery to most Americans because it only affects the inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Historically, the district did not have electoral representation in presidential elections because it was not a state. It was (and still is) under Congressional purview, in accordance with Article I, Sec. 8.17 of the Constitution.

As U.S. law evolved and the district's citizens were subject to new obligations such as income taxes, they demanded more political representation (no taxation without representation!). Congress resolved in 1960 to give the District voting power in presidential elections, but not Congressional representation (even non-voting), through the 23rd Amendment. The law, ratified in 1961, gave Washington, D.C., electoral power as if it were a state equal to the smallest actual state. In practice, that meant three – one for each theoretical senator and representative.

As the District campaigns for statehood, the amendment has become a potential barrier to the cause because the Douglass Commonwealth – the new state that would be carved out of D.C. – would have three electoral votes. Meanwhile, a reduced federal district consisting of Capitol Hill, the White House, and other government offices would theoretically keep its three votes. Article I, Sec.1.2 of the Constitution, however, forbids anyone "holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States" from serving as an elector. This disqualifies the only theoretical residents of a reduced federal district – the First Family. To remove this barrier, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper has proposed repealing the amendment – a tall order given the politically charged nature of D.C. statehood.

America has had a few periods in time when the presidency was in a bit of limbo. Presidents like James Garfield and Woodrow Wilson spent months incapacitated, but not legally dead, meaning they technically continued to serve despite being incapable. Article II Sec. 1.6 of the Constitution specified that an incapable president could be removed if  congressional declared the office vacant. Otherwise, the rules for presidential succession were vague.

After John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the 25th Amendment cleared any doubts in cases of presidential disability or death. The first two sections stated that if a president died or resigned, the vice-president took over. If a vice-president died or resigned, the president nominated a new one.

The most important clauses are in sections 3 and 4. Sec. 3 explicitly required the president to transmit in writing that he was incapable of executing the duties of his office. If he refused, Sec. 4 gave the vice-president the power to intervene. If the vice-president and a majority of cabinet officers testified in writing to Congress that the president was incapable, the vice-president could take over until the president was deemed capable again, died, or resigned.

Although the amendment was written after the Kennedy assassination, the writers likely had Woodrow Wilson in mind. The president suffered a stroke in 1919, which left him half-paralyzed. But he would not resign, and Vice President Thomas Marshall would not take power without congressional authorization and a written declaration from Wilson. The 25th Amendment circumvented these problems, ensuring a smooth succession in the case of death or disability.

The 27th Amendment forbids congressional pay raises from taking effect until after an election has taken place. Unlike the other amendments, which were proposed to meet specific issues and close gaps in the Constitution as they arose, this one passed Congress in 1789, but did not take effect until 1992.

Per the Constitution Center, at the heart of the amendment was a debate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention over public servants' pay. Benjamin Franklin wanted to nix all Congressional pay, arguing that politicians should not have any opportunity to get rich in office. The Convention, however, approved Congress' power to set its own salaries. In response, James Madison proposed, alongside 11 other amendments, an amendment that would prevent the raises from taking effect immediately. He reasoned that if an election took place first, a public unhappy with the salary raises could vote the guilty parties out, denying them the benefit of the raise.

While 10 of Madison's amendments became the Bill of Rights, the one that would become the 27th Amendment only got six votes from the original 13 states (10 were needed). But since there was no expiry date on the legislation, it sat there in limbo into the 20th century without the necessary votes for approval.

By 1982, congressional approval had cratered as Americans discovered the various perks and high salaries Capitol Hill politicians enjoyed that ordinary Americans could only dream of. After a college student brought the amendment to national attention, a campaign for ratification, motivated by Congress' largesse, got it through in 1992, when 38 states ratified it.