Why amendments




















In this case, the amendment is called a restatement of financials. An amendment to SEC files can be more consequential than most. The SEC could penalize the company for misstating its earnings. The amended earnings could trigger a selloff by shareholders or even lead to a class-action lawsuit against the company. Local, state, and federal laws can be changed through the ratification of amendments.

Legislative bodies in the U. This can be done through new legislation or amendments to existing legislation. Amendments may be introduced to address circumstances and events that were not foreseen when a piece of legislation was initially signed into law. The most familiar example of this process is, of course, the U.

Constitution, which has been amended 27 times since it was ratified in The first 10 of those amendments constitute the Bill of Rights. Amendments are often added while proposed laws are being debated and before the final votes are taken.

Amendments frequently are used to address events that were unforeseen when the original document was created. For example, banking, commerce, and taxation laws and regulations were written long before the internet existed. Many of these laws and regulations had to be amended in order to facilitate and regulate online payment systems, electronic signatures, online stock transactions, and more.

Securities and Exchange Commission. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. But Richard C. Leone, president of the New York-based Twentieth Century Fund, a nonpartisan research group, says recent efforts to amend the Constitution go too far.

His organization hopes to balance the argument by publishing The New Federalist Papers, taking the name from the original Federalist Papers which were written to promote ratification of the Constitution. Polsby, the Northwestern law professor, said the number of proposed amendments is not uncommon. But he agreed that political fixes do not necessarily belong in the Constitution - with Prohibition being the prime example.

State legislatures often call upon Congress to propose constitutional amendments. While these calls may bring some political pressure to bear, Congress is under no constitutional obligation to respond.

The U. Constitution does not contain a provision requiring Congress to submit a proposed amendment upon request by some requisite number of states. In addition to constitutional amendments proposed by Congress, states have the option of petitioning Congress to call a constitutional convention.

Legislatures in two-thirds of states must agree, however. While the convention process has yet to be triggered, efforts to do so are not new. Interest in a U. In the early s, direct election of senators was a hot topic. In the s and s, federal taxing power was the focus of many applications. Two issues came close to triggering conventions during the s to s—apportionment and a balanced federal budget.

Madison sought to allay these fears with the Ninth Amendment. It ensures that even while certain rights are enumerated in the Constitution, people still retain other non-enumerated rights. Legal scholars and courts have long debated the meaning of the Ninth Amendment, particularly whether or not it provides a foundation for such rights as privacy as in the case Griswold v.

As the final amendment in the Bill of Rights , the 10th Amendment originally aimed to reassure Anti-Federalists by further defining the balance of power between the national government and those of the individual states. Over the generations, debate has continued over which powers fall into this latter category, and what limitations should be placed on the expanding powers of the federal government. The first amendment to be ratified after the Bill of Rights, the 11th Amendment was also the first to be framed in direct response to a Supreme Court verdict.

In Chisholm v. Georgia , the Court had ruled that the plaintiff, a resident of South Carolina, had the right to sue Georgia for repayment of debts incurred during the Revolutionary War. After many states argued that using the federal courts in this way would shift too much power to the national government, Congress passed the 11th Amendment, which removes all cases involving suits between states from federal court jurisdiction. Passed in the wake of the chaotic presidential election of , in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr received the exact same number of votes in the Electoral College , the 12th Amendment provides the method for selecting president and vice president of the United States.

Though Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution had mandated that each elector cast two votes without differentiating between their choices for president and vice president, the 12th Amendment requires electors to split the balloting for the two offices. More than six decades passed between ratification of the 12th and 13th Amendments. With the United States roiled by sectional tensions over slavery, few in the post-founding generations wanted to provoke a constitutional crisis by proposing a potentially divisive amendment.

But after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation , which freed only enslaved people behind enemy lines during the Civil War , support grew for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. Sandford by stating that anyone born in the United States is a citizen. It also extended the civil rights of citizens and their right to due process by protecting civil rights from infringement by the states as well as the federal government.

Together with the Bill of Rights, these broad protections form the foundations of civil rights law in the United States, and have been invoked over the years by various groups of citizens as well as corporations seeking equal treatment under the law. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment repealed the three-fifths clause of the original Constitution, which held that each enslaved person counted for three-fifths of a person.

It specified that every resident of a state should be counted as a full person for the purposes of congressional representation. Section 4 exempted federal and state governments from paying any debts incurred by the former Confederate states or compensating them for the loss of their human property. After Congress enfranchised Black male voters in the South by passing the Reconstruction Act of , it sought to protect this right under the Constitution.

As the last of the so-called Civil War amendments, all of which sought to ensure equality for African Americans, the 15th Amendment outlaws discrimination in voting rights on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

With the end of Reconstruction in , however, Southern states effectively disenfranchised Black voters by enacting poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory practices. The promise of the 15th Amendment to protect Black voting rights remained unfulfilled until the civil rights movement and passage of the Voting Rights Act of The decision drew widespread outrage, and led to the passage of the first of four constitutional amendments that would be ratified during the Progressive era.

The movement in favor of the popular election of senators gained strength in the late 19th century, fueled by a view of the Senate as an out-of-touch, elitist group subject to corruption. By , many state legislatures had lent their vocal support to the change, leading to ratification of the 17th Amendment the following year.

The amendment substantially altered the structure of Congress as set out in Article I of the Constitution, removing from state legislatures the power to choose U. The new income tax freed the government from its dependence on the liquor tax, and senators now directly elected were subject to greater pressure from temperance advocates.

Prohibition remained in effect for the next 13 years, until its repeal with the 21st Amendment. Susan B. With a constitutional amendment stalled in Congress for decades, suffragists focused their efforts on the states, where they were able to make gradual progress. Even after ratification of the 19th Amendment, many women of color were subject to various types of voter suppression until passage of the Voting Rights Act of Before ratification of the 20th Amendment, 13 months had passed between the election of a new Congress and the time it held its first meeting.

It also moved up the inauguration of the president by six weeks, moving it to January



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