Yes, the Bill of Rights can be changed or repealed. Every one of the first ten amendments is subject to the same amendment process laid out in Article V of the Constitution, and nothing in that article gives those ten amendments any special or permanent status. What protects them is not legal immunity but arithmetic: a change needs two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress (or a convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures), followed by ratification from three-fourths of the states, currently 38 out of 50. That has never happened to any provision in the Bill of Rights, but the mechanism exists and has been used to alter other parts of the Constitution.
Why the Bill of Rights Has No Special Protection
The Bill of Rights is not a separate document. It is the first ten amendments to the Constitution, proposed by Congress in 1789 and ratified by the states in 1791. Those amendments were added through the same Article V process used for every amendment since, from the Thirteenth abolishing slavery to the Twenty-Seventh limiting congressional pay changes.1Library of Congress. ArtV.1 Overview of Article V, Amending the Constitution Because they came in through amendment, they carry exactly the same legal weight as the rest of the Constitution. Nothing in the text elevates them.
Article V does contain one genuinely permanent restriction, but it has nothing to do with the Bill of Rights: no state can be stripped of its equal representation in the Senate without that state’s consent.2Cornell Law School. Article V – Amending the Constitution – Overview of Article V Beyond that single clause, everything in the Constitution is on the table.
The Two Ways an Amendment Gets Proposed
Article V offers two proposal paths. Only one has ever produced an amendment.
Congressional Proposal
The standard route is a joint resolution in Congress. It needs a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate. That threshold applies to members present and voting, assuming a quorum, not to the full membership of each chamber. The Supreme Court settled this in the National Prohibition Cases (1920).2Cornell Law School. Article V – Amending the Constitution – Overview of Article V So the exact number of votes needed shifts with attendance.
The President has no formal role. The Supreme Court confirmed in Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798) that a proposed amendment does not require the President’s signature, and reinforced the point in Hawke v. Smith (1920).3Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov. Role of the President in Proposing an Amendment The amendment pipeline runs through Congress and the states.
State-Called Convention
The second path lets two-thirds of state legislatures, currently 34, compel Congress to call a national convention for proposing amendments.2Cornell Law School. Article V – Amending the Constitution – Overview of Article V This route has never been used. It has come close: by 1912, thirty-one states had submitted limited convention petitions, one short of the threshold at the time, and more recently roughly 27 states have had outstanding applications for a balanced-budget amendment, with aggregated counts reaching as high as 33.
Basic questions about a convention remain legally untested: whether Congress could limit its scope, how delegates would be chosen, what voting rules would apply. That uncertainty is one reason no convention has ever materialized.
How Ratification Works
A proposed amendment does nothing until three-fourths of the states approve it. With 50 states, that means 38 must ratify.2Cornell Law School. Article V – Amending the Constitution – Overview of Article V Congress chooses which method the states must use: votes in state legislatures, or votes in specially convened state ratifying conventions. The legislature method has been the norm. The convention method was used exactly once, for the Twenty-First Amendment repealing Prohibition.
Congress can also attach a time limit. Starting with the Eighteenth Amendment in 1917, Congress has typically imposed a seven-year deadline, though this is a convention rather than a constitutional requirement.4Legal Information Institute. Congressional Deadlines for Ratification of an Amendment The Supreme Court upheld the practice in Dillon v. Gloss (1921).
Proof an Amendment Can Be Undone
The strongest evidence that the Constitution can be reversed on any point is the Twenty-First Amendment, ratified in 1933, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and ended Prohibition. It remains the only time one amendment has directly overturned another. Congress used the state-convention method for ratification rather than the usual state-legislature route, partly because many legislators did not want to cast a politically risky vote for or against alcohol.
The lesson is structural. If the Eighteenth Amendment could be scrapped entirely, so could the First, the Second, the Fourth, or any other part of the Bill of Rights. The question has never been legal possibility. It has been political will.
How Close the Bill of Rights Has Come
Congress has come remarkably close to modifying the First Amendment. After the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson (1989) that flag burning is protected speech, repeated efforts to pass a flag-desecration amendment followed. In 2006, a joint resolution authorizing Congress to ban flag burning passed the House and fell one vote short in the Senate, 66 to 34.5U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 109th Congress – 2nd Session Had that single vote gone the other way, the amendment would have advanced to the states for ratification, and the First Amendment’s free-speech protections could have been formally narrowed.
The barriers to changing the Bill of Rights are high, but they are not impossibly high. A galvanizing issue with the right political alignment can push a proposal through Congress. The ratification gauntlet of 38 states adds another formidable layer, but the flag-burning episode shows the process is not purely theoretical.
How the Bill of Rights Changes Without a Formal Amendment
In practice, the meaning of the Bill of Rights shifts far more often through Supreme Court interpretation than through Article V. Judicial review, established in Marbury v. Madison (1803), lets the Court redefine how constitutional provisions apply. The text stays the same; the practical effect changes.
The Second Amendment is a clear example. For most of American history, courts treated it as tied to state militias. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep a firearm at home for self-defense, independent of militia service. That single decision reshaped gun regulations nationwide without anyone proposing an amendment.
Incorporation Against the States
The Bill of Rights originally restricted only the federal government. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Barron v. City of Baltimore (1833). After the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, the Court gradually began applying individual rights to state governments through selective incorporation, using the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. This unfolded case by case over more than a century. Today, nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to state and local governments, with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as notable exceptions. The scope of the Bill of Rights expanded enormously through judicial decisions rather than through Article V.
Why It Has Never Actually Happened
The Bill of Rights has never been formally amended, and the reasons are practical rather than legal. The supermajority requirements function as a consensus filter. Any change must command roughly two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states, which means a small but determined minority in either body can block a proposal. Thirteen states can stop any amendment cold. One-third plus one in either chamber of Congress can prevent a proposal from ever reaching the states.
For rights as embedded in American political identity as free speech, religious liberty, and protection from unreasonable searches, building the level of agreement needed to weaken a protection is nearly unimaginable in ordinary conditions. That arithmetic, combined with cultural attachment, is what keeps the Bill of Rights intact. It is not that the document is untouchable. It is that the numbers required to touch it have never been there.