Editing Constitutional amendment (section)

==== Federal constitution ====
{{main|Amending the United States Constitution}}
{{see also|List of amendments to the United States Constitution}}
[[Article Five of the United States Constitution]] describes the process whereby the federal Constitution may be altered. [[List of amendments to the United States Constitution|Twenty-seven amendments]] have been added (appended as [[wikt:codicil|codicils]]) to the Constitution.

Amendment proposals may be adopted and sent to the states for ratification by either:
* A two-thirds ([[supermajority]]) vote of members present—if a [[quorum]] exists—in both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the [[United States Congress]]; or
* A majority vote of state delegations at a [[Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution|national convention called by Congress]] at the request of the [[State legislature (United States)|legislatures]] of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states. (This method has never been used.)

All 33 amendment proposals that have been sent to the states for ratification since the establishment of the Constitution have come into being via the Congress. State legislatures have however, at various times, used their power to apply for a national convention in order to pressure Congress into proposing a desired amendment. For example, the movement to amend the Constitution to provide for the direct election of [[United States Senators|senators]] began to see such proposals regularly pass the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] only to die in the Senate from the early 1890s onward. As time went by, more and more state legislatures adopted resolutions demanding that a convention be called, thus pressuring the Senate to finally relent and approve what later became the [[Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Seventeenth Amendment]] for fear that such a convention—if permitted to assemble—might stray to include issues above and beyond just the direct election of senators.

To become an operative part of the Constitution, an amendment, whether proposed by Congress or a national constitutional convention, must be ratified by either:
* The legislatures of three-fourths (at present 38) of the states; or
* [[State ratifying conventions]] in three-fourths (at present 38) of the states.

Congress has specified the state legislature ratification method for all but one amendment. The ratifying convention method was used for the [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-first Amendment]], which became part of the Constitution in 1933.

Since the turn of the 20th century, amendment proposals sent to the states for ratification have generally contained a seven-year ratification deadline, either in the body of the amendment or in the resolving clause of the joint resolution proposing it. The Constitution does not expressly provide for a deadline on the state legislatures' or state ratifying conventions' consideration of proposed amendments. In ''[[Dillon v. Gloss]]'' (1921), the Supreme Court affirmed that Congress—if it so desires—could provide a deadline for ratification. An amendment with an attached deadline that is not ratified by the required number of states within the set time period is considered ''inoperative'' and rendered [[mootness|moot]].<ref name="DvG">{{ussc|name=Dillon v. Gloss|256|368|1921}}</ref>

A proposed amendment becomes an official Article of the Constitution immediately once it is ratified by three-fourths of the States.<ref name=DvG /> The Article usually [[Coming into force|goes into force]] at this time too, though it may self-impose a delay before that happens, as was the case of the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eighteenth Amendment]]. Every ratified Amendment has been certified or proclaimed by an official of the federal government, starting with the [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]], then the [[Administrator of General Services]], and now the [[Archivist of the United States]], with the Archivist currently being responsible for certification under {{USC |1|106b}}.<ref>{{cite web|last=Huckabee|first=David C.|title=Ratification of Amendments to the U.S. Constitution|url=https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs415/m1/1/high_res_d/97-922gov_1997Sep30.pdf|work=[[Congressional Research Service reports]] (97-922 GOV)|publisher=[[Congressional Research Service]], The [[Library of Congress]]|location=Washington D.C.|date=September 30, 1997|access-date=February 23, 2019|via=University of North Texas Digital Library|archive-date=May 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220511070022/https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs415/m1/1/high_res_d/97-922gov_1997Sep30.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> The certification document usually contains a list of the States that ratified the Amendment. This certification is just used by the federal government to keep an official record and archive of the Amendment for its own purposes, and does not actually have any legal effect on the Amendment.