Constitutional Amendment Process: About

The Amendment Process

How does an Amendment get added to the Constitution? The major steps of each of the two pathways to adding an Amendment are laid out below, but you can find the full details behind the process here.

Path 1:

• Step 1: Two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate propose and vote on a constitutional amendment. This sends the proposed amendment to the states for ratification.
• Step 2: Three-fourths of the states ratify the proposed amendment, either by their legislatures or through special ratifying 'conventions'.

Path 2:

• Step 1: Two-thirds of state legislatures ask Congress to call “a convention for proposing amendments” as stipulated in Article V of the Constitution.
• Step 2: States send delegates to this convention, where they can propose amendments to the Constitution. There can be many amendments proposed during this time. 
• Step 3: Three-fourths of the states ratify a given amendment approved by the convention, either by their legislatures or special ratifying conventions. 

Most Frequently Requested Amendments

Constitutional Amendments: Links  

• The Strange Saga of the 27th Amendment
• Proposed Amendments Seldom Go Anywhere
• Interactive Constitution 

• Amending America: Proposed Amendments to the United States Constitution, 1787 to 2014

Article V of the Constitution

Article V of the Constitution is where the nation is given instructions on how to modify the country's most important legal document.

It is incredibly difficult to meet the requirements needed for ratifying an amendment due to the amount of support required from both lawmakers and the states themselves.

Read the Constitution