- Do you think that we should amend the Constitution today?

- Absolutely not.

What?

- [Ben] In your own words, how would each of you describe the Constitution?

- Awesome.

- We wouldn't really be a country without all those important amendments.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, in that no laws are above it, in the same way that the Philly cheesesteak is the supreme lunch of the land, in that no sandwiches are above it.

And as the supreme law of the land, it means that neither Congress nor any state can pass laws that conflict with the Constitution's text.

But what happens if that text changes?

That is good.

You may not realize it, but we've actually made changes to the Constitution 27 times.

26 of those changes stuck, since one amendment made the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol illegal, and then 14 years later, another amendment made it legal again.

Look, it was the Great Depression.

Your great-grandparents needed a drink.

But the world has changed a lot since the Constitution was written, so why haven't there been more changes, and should we be updating it more often?

By the end of this video, you'll have a better understanding of how to change the Constitution, why we've changed it thus far, and whether there are any other amendments we could all agree on in these polarizing times.

I'm Ben Sheehan.

And this is "Civics Made Easy."

What are amendments?

As I've mentioned, Constitutional amendments are changes.

Sometimes they're additions to the document, like the 16th Amendment, which let the federal government collect income tax, or the 19th, which added voting rights protections for women.

Sometimes amendments just revise an existing process, like the 12th, which tweaked how the Electoral College works, and the 17th, which changed how we elect U.S.

Senators.

Instead of state lawmakers electing them, since 1913, you and I get to do it.

Some of the Constitution's most famous parts, in fact, are the amendments.

The 13th abolished slavery.

The 14th established birthright citizenship.

And similar to the 19th, the 15th and 26th Amendments extended voting rights protections to Black Americans and adults 18 and up.

And you might know the first 10 amendments as the Bill of Rights, which guarantee things like freedom of speech, of religion, of being able to own guns, the right to a defense lawyer and a trial in front of a jury of your peers, not being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment if you're found guilty, and a lot more.

Also, any part of the Constitution can be amended, except for one, the provision that no state, without its consent can be deprived of an equal number of U.S.

senators to all the others.

Meaning, 49 states can't gang up on Rhode Island and take away its two senators unless, for some reason, Rhode Island agreed.

That means everything else in the Constitution can be amended, including the amendment process, which you might wanna understand, especially if you think the Constitution should be changed.

I'm here at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the only museum in the country full dedicated to the Constitution.

Now, we touched on this in episode 10, but there are two ways to amend the Constitution.

One: 2/3 of states or 34 can call a constitutional convention, which has never happened.

So every amendment we've ever had has followed the other path.

First, you need 2/3 of the House and the Senate to pass an amendment.

Then, it goes to the states, where you need 38, 3/4, to ratify it.

States can ratify in one of two ways.

Either their legislatures vote on it or they hold mini constitutional conventions.

Congress gets to pick which method.

So far, 26 amendments have been ratified by state legislatures.

Only one, the 21st, which repealed prohibition, was ratified by state conventions.

Why?

Congress didn't trust state lawmakers to do the right thing.

Too much influence from the prohibition lobby, so they handed it to the people.

27 amendments, but none since 1992.

Could it happen again?

Is there anything that Congress and the states could actually agree on?

To find out, I decided to sit down with an expert.

Not Alexander Hamilton, Jeffrey Rosen, CEO of the National Constitution Center.

Why do you think people want to amend the Constitution?

- I think they want to express their views about what the Constitution means.

The idea that the Constitution reflects the views of we the people is right in the preamble, and the Constitution sets up a mechanism for people to amend it if they can convince enough of their fellow citizens to share their views.

- It's a pretty high bar to amend the Constitution.

Do you think it's ever gonna happen again?

- It's not looking like it's around the corner these days.

A combination of political polarization and disagreement about basic issues makes it hard, both to get that 2/3 that you need to propose an amendment and the 3/4 that you need to ratify it.

- So you did an experiment recently here at the National Constitution Center where you had liberal, conservative, and libertarian constitutional scholars trying to figure out areas of agreement that could be turned into actual constitutional amendments.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

- Absolutely, it was actually a Zoom, the Zoom where it happened.

And they proposed five amendments to the Constitution, and here they are: First: 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices.

Second: making the amendment process itself a little easier.

Third: tweaking the impeachment process.

Fourth: ending the natural-born citizenship requirement for president.

And fifth: resurrecting the legislative veto, which is something Congress used to do starting in the 1930s.

It said no to executive actions by majority vote.

- So if you had this experiment and you have all of these different constitutional scholars agreeing on these five things, have they sent them to their members of Congress?

- Well, our team members are traveling across the country, but it would be great if anyone who is hearing our conversation wants to check out the amendments and think about trying to build support.

- How frequently do you think the founders wanted us to actually amend the Constitution?

- So here's a question on which Jefferson and Madison disagreed.

Jefferson, as you said, wants a convention every 19 years.

This is consistent with the core of his philosophy, which is that the earth lives in usufruct for the living and we can't have one generation impose its views on another.

Madison totally disagreed.

He thought it was a miracle that the first convention had succeeded and it might be a disaster if we had another one.

So people have disagreed throughout history about whether or not we should have another convention, including at the founding.

- Here's a fun fact.

The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, happened because of a fluke.

A student at the University of Texas named Gregory Watson handed in a term paper and got a C. Angry, he appealed the grade, but they upheld the C. So instead of walking away and living his life, he decided to spend 10 years writing letters to state legislators across the country.

In 1992, Alabama became the 38th state to ratify that amendment.

You were a sophomore at the University of Texas in Austin and you turned in a term paper and you got a C. And somehow, this led to the 27th Amendment being added to the Constitution.

Can you briefly walk me through this process.

- I wrote about the 1789 congressional compensation amendment, and it sought to correct a problem that had been going on unchecked for a very long time, that being members of Congress giving themselves sneaky, tricky, deceptive pay raises.

Went to a lot of trouble, put my heart and soul into it, got it back a few days later with a C on it.

I was very angry.

I decided that I was going to appeal that grade to the professor.

The next class period, she saw me, threw the paper at me, and said, "No change."

So I thought, "You know what?

I'm gonna get that thing ratified."

And it took me 10 years, but I got enough states, badgering them, pestering them, cajoling them, to pass it that it became the 27th Amendment.

It says that when members of Congress want to adjust their salaries, they have to wait until the next election intervenes before the adjustment may take effect.

- So how did you get these states to go along with this?

- It was literally flooding state legislatures with letters.

- I assume you're paying for the stamps yourself.

I mean, how many letters do you think you sent over that 10-year period?

- It had to have numbered in the thousands.

And I always managed to get at least one member of the legislature to introduce the resolution at the state capital so that that state can be a ratified state.

- Why did you do this?

What motivated you?

Was it a belief in the fact that you thought this needed to be part of the Constitution or was this sort of a challenge to yourself or even to prove your teacher that they should've given you a better grade?

- All three of the above.

Even if I had gotten an A on the paper, I still would've done it.

Because the lure of doing something like that would've been too strong for me to resist.

- Did your teacher ever apologize for giving you a C?

- She did not apologize, but she actually did something far better.

At the behest of another professor, he persuaded her to fill out paperwork with the registrar's office elevating my overall course grade in her class.

Supposedly the registrar noted that that was the most belated grade change in the history of the University of Texas at Austin.

So today, in 2025, I can say that I got an A in that class rather than a C.

- And I assume that makes it all worth it.

- I have a tremendous sense of personal satisfaction that I was able to accomplish something of this magnitude and basically do it by myself.

- The 27th Amendment was added to the Constitution because a student got a C on a paper and decided to prove his teacher wrong.

The 26th Amendment was added because of college students protecting the Vietnam War.

If history is our guide, it tells us that when it comes to amending the Constitution, the best bet is to turn to teenagers, which is why I'm here.

Who has some ideas of what to add to our Constitution?

What should we change?

Or does anyone thing it's perfect as is?

There's no wrong answers.

Yeah, go ahead.

- Every candidate should get equal funding and equal time on news stations.

- I think the right to bear arms, it made a lot of sense when it was put in place, but it's kind of outdated.

I feel like it should have limitations at the very least.

- [Ben] Okay.

- Every public school should get like the same amount of funding.

- We should have more limitations and regulations on the police force to like limit corruption of police officers.

- I think a woman's right to do what she wants to do with her body should be enshrined in the Constitution.

- Yes.

- The Constitution has like a age limit on how young you can be to be president.

I think we should now also have like a limit on how old you can be.

Former presidents have shown signs of aging, which is not good, as it might affect how they run the country.

- Age cap.

So it does say in the Constitution that you have to be at least 35 to be president.

So what age would you or would anyone cap the president at?

- Like 80, 80 maybe.

- Show of hands, who thinks that we would need a constitutional amendment and we should have a constitutional amendment to cap the age limit at 80 years old?

So why don't we try to draft an amendment?

How should we start it?

- Any person serving in a federal position, once their term is over, cannot run again shall they exceed the age of 80.

- In other amendments, when they set qualification, they named all, so we should probably name it.

'Cause otherwise, they can, people may try to find loopholes.

- There should just be an age cap for just the president instead of like every role.

- I think we should have age limits for president and also Congress.

- Show of hands, who thinks president and Congress, age limit, once you hit 80, can't run again?

Well, there's, okay that's the majority.

Okay, we got president and Congress.

Any person serving in a federal position, upon reaching 80 years of age, cannot run again for, let's do it in order, right?

For representative, senator, or president.

- And maybe edit that so that no one can be nominated to any cabinet position office over 80.

- And no one may be nominated to any cabinet position upon turning 80.

Okay, so we've drafted this amendment.

If we were to send this to our members of the Senate and the House in California, and to get people in other states to send it to their members of Congress and they voted on it, it got passed, it went to the states, it got added to the Constitution, would that restore some faith that the political process works?

Would you guys like to see that happen?

Should we go ahead and try to make that happen?

Our work's done.

The kids had some good ideas.

Like Greg Watson or the teenagers marching in the late '60s and early 70s, perhaps they'll be successful in pushing for an amendment to be ratified.

But here's where I blow your mind.

The U.S.

Constitution isn't the only one that affects you.

You have another.

All 50 states and three of our five permanently inhabited territories, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, each have their own constitution.

This constitution affects your life just as much, if not more, than the U.S.

one.

And if you haven't read the U.S.

Constitution in a while or at all, then I'm guessing you almost certainly haven't read your state's constitution, which in almost every case is easier to amend than the U.S.

one.

Now, the process differs from state to state.

Many, if not all, allow the state legislature to amend it.

Some states have conventions or commissions to propose amendments.

Some let the state legislature put an amendment on the ballot for you and I to vote on.

And some let you and I propose amendments, put them on the ballot, and vote on them ourselves, completely bypassing our elected officials.

Today, that citizen-initiated amendment process is available in 18 states.

The catch is that, for an initiated constitutional amendment, you need enough signatures from registered voters by a certain date to get it on the ballot.

Here's a link to the rules for each of those 18 states.

I should also note that it costs money to get signatures.

That money is spent on volunteers going door to door or hanging out at a farmers' market or other public place with high foot traffic, trying to get signatures from registered voters.

Oftentimes we're talking about a total cost of several million, but sometimes it's a lot less.

The number varies greatly from state to state.

Once the amendment is on the ballot, in most states, it just needs a majority vote to pass.

In 2024, 23 state constitutional amendments initiated by voters were on the ballots, and 73 amendments were put on ballots by state legislatures.

Dozens of them were successfully passed.

As always, my DMs are open for questions, and I'll do my best to respond.

I'm Ben Sheehan and I hope you learned something.