27th Amendment paper

The 27th amendment is very unique in that it took about 200 years from the date that is was proposed to the date it was officially ratified by the states. The 27th amendment has to do with pay raises or decreases for the members of Congress. Changes to the Congressional pay are supposed to take effect after the next term of office for the state representatives. This means that another election would have to happen before any pay raises or decreases can take full effect. This amendment clearly affects the Congressmen that would be making these pay increases or decreases. An example of this is that a new congress will be getting together and meeting in the first week of January 2011 and this meeting will last until the end of December 2012. During that time, Congress can pass a law to raise their own salaries, but the raise will absolutely not take effect until January 2013. So members of Congress cannot raise their own pay. They can only raise pay for the next Congress. The fact that Congress has the power to set it’s own salary was a big issue and it worried the original authors of the amendment that would become the 27th amendment in 1992. Many states too, during the discussions over ratifying the Constitution, showed great concern over congressional pay. During the first go around of ratification, only six states, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, Vermont, Delaware, and Virginia ratified this amendment. Other states would ratify this amendment in short periods of time, with the gargantuan drive toward ratification happening during the late 1980’s and 1990’s. You may be asking yourself why or how an amendment could or would be ratified almost 200 years after it’s original proposal. In the court case of Coleman v. Miller, the court ruled that if the amendment had an unspecific date, then the state legislatures could approve this amendment at any time. You might remember that the 21st amendment in particular was specified for a frame of seven years