The back-story of the last Constitutional amendment ratified, after-the-jump …
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Years ago, I had thought that the last constitutional amendment to the US Constitution came with the 18 year-old voting (26th Amendment) in the 1960’s. Then I learned that the 27th Amendment was ratified thirty years ago in 1992 (about congressional pay increases) and that it had taken eons to take effect … yet so much of the later commentary (even on this site) has to do with technical issues (as the Supreme Court has never ruled on many aspects of its implications) and it seemed too-far-into-the-legal-weeds for me.
Yet only recently did I learn the back-story behind its revival … and since regular readers know that back-stories are irresistible to me … well, it deserves notice.
First, the amendment itself, proposed in 1789:
It was among twelve original amendments proposed by James Madison … ten of which were ratified and became the Bill of Rights. Another that was not ratified by the states had to do with Congressional apportionment … plus this one. The Annenberg Center explains the philosophy behind it:
Amendment XXVII prevents members of Congress from granting themselves pay raises during the current session. Rather, any raises that are adopted must take effect during the next session of Congress. Proponents of the amendment believed that legislators are more likely to be cautious about increasing congressional pay if they have no personal stake in the vote.
Plus, the rationale is if people are really upset: they can vote-out incumbents who voted for it.
Apparently, only seven states ratified it in its initial incarnation (Ohio did so in 1873 as a symbolic protest against a congressional pay increase, as did Wyoming in 1978 for similar reasons).
In 1982, over 190 years after it was originally sent to the states, a then-nineteen year-old University of Texas (UT) student named Gregory Watson had to prepare a term paper for his Poli-Sci class on a ‘government process’.
"I'll never forget this as long as I live," Watson says. "I pull out a book that has within it a chapter of amendments that Congress has sent to the state legislatures, but which not enough state legislatures approved in order to become part of the Constitution. And this one just jumped right out at me."
Watson was intrigued. He decided to write his paper about the amendment and argue that it was still alive and could be ratified. He turned it in to the teaching assistant for his class — and got it back with a C.
The grade was given by that teaching assistant, yet when he appealed to his professor Sharon Waite:
"I kind of glanced at it, but I didn't see anything that was particularly outstanding about it and I thought the C was probably fine," she recalls.
Most people would have just taken the grade and left it at that. Gregory Watson is not most people.
"So I thought right then and there, 'I'm going to get that thing ratified.' "
He went on a letter-writing campaign, trying to interest lawmakers in his idea. Despite becoming a maniac-on-a-mission, the responses ranged from “Who cares?” to “It’s too old” to (most often) no response.
Then …. someone did respond.
And this was then-U.S. Senator William Cohen from Maine (later to serve as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense) who passed it along to someone associated with the Maine Legislature … who ratified it in 1983. Watson had similar success in Colorado the next year.
The story appeared in a magazine called State Legislatures and an official from Wyoming, reading the magazine, confirmed that his state had ratified the amendment, too, six years earlier.
Gregory Watson (at his own expense) continued his letter-writing campaign … and more and more states began to ratify the amendment. It was in 1992 — just thirty years ago — when there was a race to become the decisive 38th state to ratify between Michigan and New Jersey (the latter of which had voted against ratification in its original incarnation) which Michigan won. New Hampshire also ratified it in 1985 (also having rejected it in 1790).
By 2016, it reached its present stage where forty-six states have ratified it (excepting only Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York and Pennsylvania). Before I get to (as the ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption” would say) The Big Finish— some notes:
1) As some diarists on this site noted in 2010-11, the amendment was ratified, yet has never been ruled on by the US Supreme Court. The word “varying” alone is a subject among legal scholars, and there may be litigation if it is ever utilized.
2) While I think the amendment itself is worthy … I feel a bit uneasy extolling it. Congressional pay being set by legislators itself is a bad practice (somehow, there should be a commission of some sorts) and lacking that, this issue lends itself to yahoos who exclaim, “We shouldn’t pay those bums a dime!” Not to mention that it’s easy to grandstand if you are wealthy, and stunting pay (for the hell of it) is an open invitation to lobbyists … to remedy the situation.
3) And finally: one can’t help think of the Equal Rights Amendment, stymied by the insertion of a time limit to ratify, then the toxic campaign by the late Phyllis Schlafly and now the uncertainty of states that have recently ratified it … I hope I live to see it enacted, yet the legal issues involved are way above even my SorosMoney pay grade.
In 2016, a UT professor named Zach Elkins became interested in how a former student’s paper led to a constitutional amendment’s ratification, and he tracked-down Sharon Waite, who had left UT to work on her family’s farm in south Texas years earlier (and had no luck getting a teaching job there). She wondered if all of her degrees and papers ... had been worth it, after all?
That changed when Elkins told her … it was her former student who had helped enact a constitutional amendment:
"Many people have said you never know what kind of effect you're going to have on other people and on the world. And now I'm in my 70’s, I've come to believe that's very, very true. And this is when it really hit me because I thought to myself, 'You have, just by making this fellow a grade he didn't like, affected the U.S. Constitution more than any of your fellow professors ever thought about it, and how ironic is that?'"
Professor Elkins asked her if she would co-sign a request to change Watson’s grade from “C” to “A” — which she eagerly did — and on March 1st, 2017 (thirty-five years later) the University of Texas received (and later adopted) the request.
Let’s close this story of a ten-year journey for Mr. Watson (unsure of the result) with the 1964 break-out hit song for the folksinger Tom Paxton, I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From tampaedski:
In the front-page story about the amoral anti-abortion movement— dsnottselliot hits a home run; this rant is grade A.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the Secret Service erasing all text messages from Jan 5th to 6th, 2021 — thedudeminds links to an interesting Twitter feed on the subject.
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful (and now eternal) *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment featuring that photo.
TOP PHOTOSJuly 13th, 2022
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
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