Yes, the U.S. Constitution has been changed. It has been formally amended 27 times since its ratification in 1788, with the most recent amendment adopted in 1992. Beyond those formal changes, the Supreme Court regularly reinterprets constitutional language in ways that shift how the document works in practice, so the Constitution effectively evolves even in years when no new amendment is added.
How the Constitution Gets Changed
Article V lays out two ways to propose an amendment and two ways to ratify one. Every one of the 27 amendments has followed the same route: Congress proposes it by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, and three-fourths of state legislatures approve it.1National Archives. Article V, U.S. Constitution
The alternative routes exist on paper but have rarely or never been used. Two-thirds of state legislatures can call a national convention to propose amendments, but no such convention has ever been successfully convened. A balanced-budget campaign in the 1970s and 1980s collected 32 state applications, two short of the threshold.2Congress.gov. The Article V Convention for Proposing Constitutional Amendments For ratification, Congress can require approval by state ratifying conventions instead of legislatures, but that path has been used only once, for the Twenty-First Amendment.1National Archives. Article V, U.S. Constitution
One detail surprises most people: the president plays no role. The Supreme Court settled this in 1798 in Hollingsworth v. Virginia, ruling that presidential approval is not required to propose or adopt a constitutional amendment.3Legal Information Institute. Hollingsworth v Virginia Amending the Constitution is a matter between Congress and the states.
The 27 Amendments
The Bill of Rights (1791)
The first ten amendments arrived together. Opponents of the original Constitution argued it gave the federal government too much power without enough protection for individual rights. The First Congress proposed twelve amendments in 1789, and ten were ratified by three-fourths of the states on December 15, 1791.4National Archives. The Bill of Rights: A Transcription
The First Amendment protects speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition. The Fourth through Eighth Amendments cover criminal justice, from unreasonable searches to cruel punishment. The Ninth clarifies that the listed rights aren’t exhaustive, and the Tenth reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the states or the people.5Legal Information Institute. Bill of Rights At the time, these protections limited only the federal government; state governments were not bound by them.
The Reconstruction Amendments (1865–1870)
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments represent the most dramatic transformation of the Constitution since the Bill of Rights. The Thirteenth, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States.6National Archives. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865) The Fourteenth, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States, prohibited states from denying due process, and guaranteed equal protection under the law.7Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment The Fifteenth prohibited denying the right to vote based on race.8National Archives. The Constitution: Amendments 11-27
Before these amendments, the Constitution said almost nothing about what states could do to their own residents. Afterward, Congress had explicit authority to enforce civil rights protections against state governments, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses became the legal basis for most of the landmark civil rights rulings that followed.
Expanding the Vote and Reshaping Government
Several later amendments expanded who gets to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, prohibited denying the vote based on sex.8National Archives. The Constitution: Amendments 11-27 The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age to eighteen.9Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-Sixth Amendment Together with the Fifteenth, these changes turned a narrow electorate of white male property owners into something close to universal adult suffrage.
Other amendments changed how government operates. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, fixed a flaw in the Electoral College that had produced a president and vice president from opposing parties in 1796 and a tie in 1800. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, authorized the federal income tax.10National Archives. 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Federal Income Tax (1913)
The One Amendment That Was Undone
The Constitution’s only experiment with regulating personal behavior came with the Eighteenth Amendment, which in 1919 banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol.11Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Eighteenth Amendment Prohibition proved unenforceable and unpopular, and the Twenty-First Amendment repealed it in 1933. That makes it the only amendment ever to undo another one.12Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-First Amendment
The Most Recent Change
The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, ratified in 1992, prevents any congressional pay raise from taking effect until after the next election. Its timeline is what makes it unusual: Congress originally proposed it in 1789 alongside the Bill of Rights, but it took more than two hundred years to reach ratification.13Constitution Annotated. Twenty-Seventh Amendment – Congressional Compensation
Why Only 27 Out of Thousands
Twenty-seven amendments sounds like a lot until you learn that Congress has seen more than 11,000 proposed amendments since 1787.14National Archives. Amending America The overwhelming majority never made it out of committee. Getting 290 House members and 67 senators to agree on precise constitutional language is a steep climb; getting 38 state legislatures to then ratify it is steeper.
Congress can also impose ratification deadlines, and the Supreme Court upheld the practice in Dillon v. Gloss (1921). A seven-year window has become standard. The Equal Rights Amendment shows how a deadline can kill a popular proposal. Congress approved the ERA in 1972 with a seven-year deadline, later extended to 1982. Only 35 states ratified it by that cutoff. Three more states ratified after the deadline expired, bringing the total to 38, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2023 that the states had not clearly shown the Archivist was required to certify it after the deadline had lapsed.15Congress.gov. The Equal Rights Amendment: Background and Recent Legal Developments The ERA remains in legal limbo.
The Other Way the Constitution Changes
Formal amendments are rare. The more common way the Constitution evolves is through Supreme Court decisions that reinterpret existing language for new circumstances. This power of judicial review traces back to Marbury v. Madison in 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall established that courts have the authority to strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution.16National Archives. Marbury v. Madison (1803)
Consider the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. Written in 1791, its authors were thinking about soldiers rifling through a home. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that the government’s collection of cell-phone location records is a search under the Fourth Amendment, even though no officer entered anyone’s property.17Supreme Court of the United States. Carpenter v. United States (2018) The text didn’t change. The Court decided the principle behind it extends to digital surveillance.
Incorporating the Bill of Rights Against the States
One of the most sweeping changes to how the Constitution operates never involved a new amendment at all. Starting in 1925, the Supreme Court began ruling that individual protections in the Bill of Rights are “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty” and therefore binding on state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.18Constitution Annotated. Modern Doctrine on Selective Incorporation of Bill of Rights The Court incorporated free speech first, then freedom of the press, then religious liberty, and so on over the following decades.
Today, nearly all Bill of Rights protections apply equally against federal and state governments. Not a word of the Constitution was rewritten, but what the document does was radically expanded.
When the Court Reverses Itself
The Supreme Court can also overturn its own prior interpretations, though it sets a high bar. The Court has said it needs “special justification” beyond simply disagreeing with an earlier decision’s reasoning. It weighs whether the earlier rule has proven unworkable, whether later decisions have eroded its logic, and whether people and institutions have built their lives around the existing rule in ways a reversal would disrupt.
Constitutional meaning, in other words, isn’t locked in even by Supreme Court precedent. When the Court overrules a prior case, the practical effect can be as significant as a formal amendment. Rights can expand or contract based on the same constitutional text the framers wrote over two centuries ago.