The US Constitution
Introduction

The 26 th amendment of the US Constitution granted the freedom to vote to every eligible
citizen over 18. It was proposed by the US Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the state on
March 23, 1971, and July 1, 1971, respectively. The amendment improved the voting rights of
the USA citizens, thus, transforming the political milieu in American history. The Constitution
was amended significantly last time (Wegman para 1). Moreover, given the highly politicized
nature of the nation’s political landscape, it is probably to be the final amendment for everyone
still alive today. None of these regular reform proposals has garnered even a fraction of the
backing required to overcome the constitutional obstacles: a two-thirds approval in both the
Senate and the House, accompanied by endorsement in about three-quarters of the nations, which
now totals 38 in the United States(Wegman para 2).
The primary issue with the US constitution is Article V which has made amendments to
the Constitution completely impossible. The article outlines the procedure for altering the US
Constitution. The founders also designed it to be incredibly hard because Article V requires
three-quarters of the nations to approve each amendment, unlike in the other amendments where
the federal administration could make modifications (Legal Information Institute). This has
rendered ratification of constitutional reforms in the US challenging.

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It is undisputed that a few obstacles hinder the process of Constitutional renovation.
First, three-quarters of national conventions or governments must approve each reform. It’s
challenging to get so many countries to ratify an irreversible constitutional reform. Second, two-
thirds of Congress must support a proposal for it to prevail. Both factions must work together to
bring in a new proposal, as no group has ever commanded two-thirds of both chambers (Legal
Information Institute). Addressing the above challenges is crucial because the US government
has failed to approve necessary and beneficial reforms because of the restrictions brought by
Article V. Therefore, the fundamental hypothesis of this essay is that Article V of the US
Constitution limits the legislators in carrying out critical constitutional amendments, with the
actual Constitution playing a significant role. Article V should be amended to make it easier to
approve various changes to the US constitution.

Literature Review

Schmidt (n.p) notes that on September 17, 1787, the US Constitution was drafted after
weeks of competing viewpoints, intense arguments, and contradicting ideologies were ultimately
reconciled through agreement and thorough contemplation. The architects of the Convention
were representatives chosen by state governments to represent the views of their individual
nations’ citizens. In 1787, the representatives met for the first time in the Philadelphia statehouse
as a group of 55 delegates to discuss the Constitution (Edling, n.p). The delegate’s first goal was
to modify the Confederation Articles, drafted in 1777 after the American War of independence.
The USA constitution has been exposed to revision on 27 instances since 1789 (Schmidt para 1).
Notably, the first ten were approved in 1791. The Constitution and its amendments are crucial
because they help serve the citizens’ needs. Besides, they also help safeguard the sovereign
rights of American citizens.

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However, amending the Constitution in the USA has never been a walk in the park.
According to Desilver (n.p), out of almost 12,000 modifications that have been suggested since
the Constituent Assembly, only 33 have been submitted to the nations for approval, and only 27
have managed to be incorporated into the Constitution. In regards to this report, it is undisputed
that some nations are better off amending their Constitution. For example, India’s Constitution
was promulgated approximately 69 years ago and modified 101 times (Dixon, n.p). Since 1999,
congressional members have submitted 747 suggested constitutional changes. They have
addressed a wide range of issues, ranging from increasing the duration of House tenure to
banning any further attempts to substitute the United States dollar with a primary notional
currency. However, none has made it into the Constitution (Ginsburg and James, 700).
The most recent instance of a proposed change receiving the requisite two-thirds approval
in both Congress’ houses was in 1978. After the seven-year deadline elapsed, just 16 countries
had approv