CONSTITUTIONAL WRONGS
The framers of the U.S. Constitution didn’t make it easy to amend America’s founding document. Out of 11,000 proposed amendments, only 27 have made it through the ratification process to become the supreme law of the land. From odd to annoying, here are a few fails.
TITLES OF NOBILITY AMENDMENT (1810)
“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain, any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”
The above amendment was actually approved by Congress. Some historians say that lawmakers wanted to keep Napoleon’s American-born sister-in-law from being proclaimed “Duchess of Baltimore.” Others say Congress feared foreign titles made far-too-tempting bribes. Though technically still active, the nobility amendment fell short of the 13 states (three-fourths of the total at that time) needed for ratification, and never became law. American citizens who might be grateful: honorary British knights Steven Spielberg, George H. W. Bush, and Kevin Spacey, as well as Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.
SELF-DENIAL (1876)
Residents of Potter County, Pennsylvania, must have really hated the Senate back in 1876. According to records in the National Archive, they complained to Congress that the Senate “always advanced the interest of the money, railroad, and manufacturing speculators to the prejudice of the common welfare.” Their proposal: pass a constitutional amendment eliminating the Senate. (The proposal never made it to the Senate.)
THE U.S.E. (1893)
Wisconsin representative Lucas Miller thought the United States would grow…and grow…and grow. He envisioned a republic that added state after state until “every Nation on Earth” had become part of the country. His proposed amendment: rename the nation “the United States of the Earth” in preparation for that future. Miller was not nominated for a second term.
April Fool’s Day tradition in Italy: placing paper fish on friends’ backs.
In 21st-century America, every citizen has equal rights under the law. Except some citizens. The idea of the Equal Rights Amendment was to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of gender, thus ending the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The amendment (proposed in 1923) passed out of Congress in 1972 and was allowed seven years for ratification. Didn’t happen. Congress then extended the deadline to 1982. It was ratified by 35 states, three short of the required 38. Since then, two more states signed on…but the 1982 deadline expired. In 2019 California representative Jackie Speier introduced a resolution that would eliminate the deadline, allowing the amendment to become part of the Constitution whenever it is ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Stay tuned…
NO MILLIONAIRES (1933)
Washington state representative Wesley Lloyd wanted a constitutional amendment outlawing millionaires. He wanted income in excess of $1 million applied to the national debt. Congress did not agree.
YOU’RE FIRED! (1974)
As the nation digested the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, Wisconsin representative Henry Reuss was looking toward the future. At the time, people seemed persuaded that the impeachment process had done its job. Reuss did not agree. The country had endured a two-year slog of an investigation, complete with constant haggling over the definition of “impeachable offenses.” Had it not been for the “Saturday Night Massacre”—when President Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus—Congress might never have acted. There had to be a smoother way to remove someone from the Oval Office. In the aftermath of Watergate, Reuss proposed a new amendment to allow “a Resolution of No Confidence in the President.” Such a resolution would require a three-fifths majority of both the House and Senate. If the vote succeeded, the amendment called for a special presidential election on the first Tuesday in November of the next even-numbered year. The amendment went nowhere.
About 200 average-size American homes could fit inside the UK’s Windsor Castle.
It might seem strange that the Constitution needed an amendment to prohibit excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. Apparently, it did. The Eighth Amendment, passed into law in 1791, took care of that. But that wasn’t enough for Indiana representative Julia Carson. She wanted a new amendment that would retain the prior prohibitions and also prohibit incarceration (both before and after trial) for minor traffic offenses. Wait…the Constitution doesn’t already prohibit that? No. Nevertheless, Carson’s bill never made it out of committee.
CONTINUITY OF CONGRESS (2003)
Article I of the Constitution requires that a quorum of the majority of its members be present in order for Congress to conduct business. On September 11, 2001, both houses of Congress were in session. Had United Airlines Flight 93 hit its likely intended target (Capitol Hill), only a handful of those elected officials would have been left to handle legislation in the aftermath of the attack. The Senate would have been okay because state governors can appoint interim senators as needed. But if a member of the House dies, a replacement must be chosen by special election, even though it can take up to four months to hold a special election. This amendment would have given Congress the power to make temporary appointments, by legislation, to both houses of Congress in the event a large number of members were unable to perform their duties. The amendment failed. The House reaffirmed its commitment to the one thing every member has in common: being duly elected by the people.
NO BUDGET, NO PAY (2012)
Most people understand that if they want to get paid, they have to do the work they’ve been hired to do. That’s why Tennessee representative Jim Cooper introduced the “No Budget, No Pay” Act in 2012. Cooper’s amendment prohibited paying any member of Congress (excluding the vice president) if both houses of Congress didn’t pass the federal budget by October 1. Not only that, they couldn’t receive retroactive pay for the period between October 1 and when they ultimately did pass the budget. It wasn’t the first time Congress proposed punitive measures related to passing the budget. The 107th Congress (2001–2002) rejected an amendment that would have forced Congress members and the president to forfeit their salaries, on a per diem basis, for every day past the end of the fiscal year that a budget for that year remained unpassed. “Any other job in the world, you don’t do your job, you don’t get paid,” Cooper said in 2012. “Congress shouldn’t be any different.”
“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.” —John Kennedy
Number of the 10 longest-lived people in history who were men: 0.