To repeal a constitutional amendment, you have to pass another amendment that cancels it, and that new amendment must clear the full Article V process: proposal by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress (or by a convention called at the request of 34 states), followed by ratification from three-fourths of the states — 38 of the 50 today. No court ruling, presidential order, or ordinary act of Congress can do it. In more than two centuries under the current Constitution, this has worked exactly once.
Proposing the Repeal
Article V gives two ways to propose any amendment, including one whose only job is to strike an existing provision.
The first is a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress. That threshold means two-thirds of the members present and voting, assuming a quorum, not two-thirds of every seat.1Library of Congress. ArtV.1 Overview of Article V, Amending the Constitution Every one of the 27 amendments ratified so far, including the one that repealed Prohibition, started this way.
The second path is a national convention, which Congress must call if two-thirds of the state legislatures — 34 states — apply for one.2National Archives. Article V, U.S. Constitution It has never been used. Article V says nothing about how delegates would be chosen, how they would vote, or whether the convention could be limited to a single subject, and those gaps are why no serious repeal campaign has tried it. The original 1787 Constitutional Convention was supposed to amend the Articles of Confederation and ended up replacing them, which is where the modern “runaway convention” worry comes from. James Madison, having lived through it, said he would “tremble for the result of a Second.”
Ratifying the Repeal
Once an amendment is proposed, three-fourths of the states have to ratify it. Congress chooses which of two ratification methods the states use.1Library of Congress. ArtV.1 Overview of Article V, Amending the Constitution
The usual method sends the amendment to each state legislature for an up-or-down vote. Twenty-six of the 27 ratified amendments took this route. The alternative asks each state to hold a special ratifying convention, where delegates elected on that single question decide. Congress has picked the convention route only once — for the 21st Amendment — on the theory that state legislators of that era were too tied to temperance organizations to vote their constituents’ actual preference.3Cornell Law School. Ratification Deadline, State Ratifying Conventions, and the Twenty-First Amendment
When the 38th state ratifies, the amendment becomes part of the Constitution. The Archivist of the United States receives the official state notices and, once the threshold is met, publishes the amendment with a certificate listing the ratifying states.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 1 U.S. Code 106b – Amendments to Constitution That role is ministerial. The Archivist records and announces; the Archivist does not judge validity.
The President and the Courts Are Not Part of This
Constitutional amendments do not go to the President. There is no signature requirement and no veto. The Supreme Court settled that in 1798 in Hollingsworth v. Virginia, where Justice Chase wrote that the President “has nothing to do with the proposition, or adoption, of amendments to the Constitution.”5Cornell Law School. Hollingsworth v Virginia Presidents have sometimes signed amendment resolutions as a gesture — Lincoln did with the Thirteenth — but the signature has no legal effect.6Cornell Law School. Role of the President in Proposing an Amendment
The Supreme Court cannot repeal an amendment either. Judicial review works by measuring ordinary law against the Constitution. A ratified amendment is the Constitution, so there is no higher rule to test it against. Courts can decide procedural questions about whether Article V was followed, and they interpret what ratified amendments mean when applied to real cases, but only Article V can undo the substance of what an amendment says.
The One Time It Worked: Ending Prohibition
The 18th Amendment, ratified in 1919, banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol for drinking purposes.7Federal Judicial Center. Prohibition in the Federal Courts: A Timeline By the early 1930s, enforcement had failed visibly, organized crime had grown up around the illegal liquor trade, and public opinion had turned. On February 20, 1933, Congress proposed the 21st Amendment. Section 1 read: “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”8Library of Congress. Twenty-First Amendment
Congress sent it to state conventions rather than state legislatures, betting that delegates elected purely on the wet-or-dry question would reflect actual public sentiment.3Cornell Law School. Ratification Deadline, State Ratifying Conventions, and the Twenty-First Amendment The bet paid off quickly. Ratification was complete on December 5, 1933, less than ten months after the proposal, one of the fastest amendment approvals on record.
The 21st Amendment also did not simply erase federal alcohol policy and stop there. Section 2 gave individual states power to control or prohibit liquor within their borders, which is why state alcohol laws still differ so widely.
Deadlines and Second Thoughts
Congress can attach a ratification deadline to any proposed amendment. The Supreme Court approved that practice in Dillon v. Gloss (1921), reading Article V to require ratification within a reasonable period and letting Congress define what reasonable means.9Justia Law. Dillon v Gloss, 256 US 368 (1921) Seven years has been the common window.
A proposal without a deadline does not expire. The 27th Amendment was first sent to the states in 1789 with no time limit and was finally ratified on May 7, 1992 — roughly 203 years later — after the Department of Justice concluded the long-delayed ratifications still counted.10U.S. National Archives. A Record-Setting Amendment For a repeal effort in real time, that mostly matters as a warning: a seven-year clock creates urgency, and the absence of one does not.
What happens if a state ratifies and then changes its mind before the 38-state line is crossed? The Constitution does not say. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court treated the effectiveness of a state’s ratification, including prior rejection or attempted rescission, as a political question for Congress.11Cornell Law School. Effect of Prior Rejection of an Amendment or Rescission of Ratification The one time the question came up in earnest, with the 14th Amendment in 1868, two states tried to rescind and Congress counted them anyway. A later lower-court ruling in Idaho v. Freeman suggested rescission should be allowed before the three-fourths threshold is reached, but that decision was vacated. Congress, in practice, gets the last word.
One Thing Cannot Be Repealed This Way
Article V itself sets one active limit on what any amendment can do. No state, without its consent, can be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate.12Library of Congress. Unamendable Subjects Stripping a state of its two senators requires that state to agree, which effectively means unanimous consent. Article V originally contained a second restriction protecting the slave importation clause and certain tax provisions until 1808, but that deadline expired long ago. Equal Senate representation is the only subject the amendment process cannot touch on its own.
Why Repeal Almost Never Happens
The math is the answer. A repeal amendment needs 290 votes in the House at full attendance, 67 in the Senate, and yes votes from 38 states. That requires agreement across parties and across states with very different populations and politics. Prohibition met that bar because its failure was visible enough to build overwhelming consensus.
Members of Congress have introduced proposals to repeal other amendments, including bills targeting the 22nd Amendment’s presidential term limits as recently as 2025, but none has come close to the two-thirds vote needed even to send the question to the states. The framers wanted the Constitution to be changeable, not easily changeable, and Article V’s supermajorities at every step are how they got there.