Dakota

The 27th amendment prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of the Congress from taking effect until the beginning of the next set of terms of office for Representatives. It is the most recent amendment to the United States Constitution, having been ratified in 1992, more than 202 years after its initial submission in 1789.


 * Background**

The Twenty-seventh Amendment provides that any change in congressional salaries may only take effect after the beginning of the next term of office for Represnatives. Sometimes called the "Congressional Compensation Amendment of 1789", the "Congressional Pay Amendment", and the "Madison Amendment", it was intended to serve as a restraint on the power of Congress to set its own salary—an obvious potential for conflict of interest. This amendment was actually suggested by a number of states. During the 1788 North Carolina convention, assembled to consider the original Constitution itself, the following amendment, among others, was requested of Congress "//The laws ascertaining the compensation of senators and representatives, for their services, shall be postponed in their operation until after the election of representatives immediately succeeding the passing thereof; that excepted which shall first be passed on the subject."// Virginia in its 1788 ratification convention recommended the identical language that North Carolina had suggested. New York in its 1788 ratification convention also urged Congress to consider this wording "//That the Compensation for the Senators and Representatives be ascertained by standing law; and that no alteration of the existing rate of Compensation shall operate for the Benefit of the Representatives, until after a subsequent Election shall have been had. "// In 1816, more than a quarter century after the Congress had officially submitted the amendment (and eleven others) to the state legislatures for consideration, the Massachusetts General Court expressed its desire for an amendment to the Constitution worded almost exactly as it was offered by Congress in 1789. The legislation embodying the recommendation was reportedly approved by the Massachusetts House Of Represenatives on a vote of 138 to 29. Sometime in December 1816 or early 1817 the Kentucky General Assembly did the same thing; and in 1817 or January 1818 Tennessee's lawmakers followed suit. Presented in the United States House Of Represenatives by Representative James Madison of Virginia, this amendment was the second of the twelve Constitutional amendments originally submitted to the state legislatures for ratification by the 1st Congress on September 25, 1789, the last ten of which became the United States Bill of Rights by December 15, 1791. From 1789 to 1791, the compensation proposal was ratified by the legislatures of only six states—Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Vermont and Virginia—out of the ten then required. As more states entered the Union, the ratification threshold increased. In 1873, more than 80 years after Congress offered it to the nation's state lawmakers, the Ohio General Assembly ratified the compensation amendment as a means of protest against the "Salary Grab Act." The Salary Grab Act not only provided for a Congressional pay raise, but made that raise retroactive.

Ratification completed
The proposed amendment was again largely forgotten, until University of Texas at Austin student Gregory Watson discovered it in 1982. The push for ratification began in earnest and the amendment became the Constitution's Twenty-seventh Amendment when it was ratified a decade later on May 5, 1992 by the Alabama Legislature, the thirty eighth state to do so. It had been erroneously believed that the ratification by the Michigan Legislature on May 7, 1992 added the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, when the June 1792 ratification of all twelve amendments by the Kentucky General Assembly during that state's initial month of statehood later came to light, it was quickly realized that the Twenty-seventh Amendment's addition to the Constitution was actually finalized on May 5, 1992 by Alabama (whose legislature had acted immediately before Michigan's). Possibly unaware of the 1792 ratification, Kentucky lawmakers ceremonially approved the amendment a second time in 1996 (almost four years after the amendment had already been made part of the Constitution). In 1989, the North Carolina General Assembly likewise re-ratified the amendment, having first adopted it two centuries earlier in 1789. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in //Coleman v. Miller//, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), any proposed amendment, which has been submitted to the states for ratification and does not specify a ratification deadline, may be ratified by the states at any time. In //Coleman//, the Supreme Court further ruled that the ratification of a constitutional amendment is political in nature—and so not a matter properly assigned to the judiciary.

Certification and Congressional acceptance of ratification
On May 18, 1992, the amendment was officially certified by Archivist of the United States Don W. Wilson. On May 19, 1992, it was printed in the Federal Register, together with the certificate of ratification. Speaker of the House Tom Foley and others called for a legal challenge to the amendment's unusual ratification. However, the //Coleman// ruling made clear that only the Congress has the authority to determine whether an amendment has—or has not—been properly made part of the Constitution, because that is a "political question". In certifying that the amendment had been validly ratified, the Archivist of the United States had acted under statutory authority granted to his office by the Congress under Title 1, section 106b of the United States Code, which states: Despite that, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia scolded Wilson for having certified the amendment without Congressional approval. Although Byrd supported Congressional acceptance of the amendment, he contended that Wilson had deviated from "historic tradition" by not waiting for Congress to consider the validity of the ratification, given the more than 202 year lapse since the Amendment had been proposed. On May 20, 1992, under the authority recognized in //Coleman//, and in keeping with the precedent first established regarding the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, each house of the 102nd Congress passed a version of a concurrent resolution agreeing that the amendment was validly ratified, despite the unorthodox period of more than 202 years for the completion of the task. However, neither version was adopted by the entire Congress.
 * < “ || //Whenever official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration that any amendment proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published, with his certificate, specifying the States by which the same may have been adopted, and that the same has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States//. ||> ” ||