List of proposed amendments to the United States Constitution

This list contains proposed amendments to the United States Constitution. Article Five of the United States Constitution prescribes two methods for proposing and two methods for the ratification of an amendment. An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a national convention called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. The latter procedure has never been used. Upon adoption by the Congress or a national convention, an amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by special state ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states. The decision of which ratification method will be used for any given amendment is Congress' alone to make. Only for the 21st amendment was the latter procedure invoked and followed.

Collectively, members of the House and Senate typically propose around 200 amendments during each two–year term of Congress. Most however, never get out of the Congressional committees in which they were proposed, and only a fraction of those that do receive enough support to win Congressional approval to actually go through the constitutional ratification process.

Congress has proposed 33 such amendments since 1789. Of these, 27 have been ratified. The framers of the Constitution, recognizing the difference between regular legislation and constitutional matters, intended that it be difficult to change the Constitution; but not so difficult as to render it an inflexible instrument of government, as the amendment mechanism in the Articles of Confederation, which required a unanimous vote of thirteen states for ratification, had proven to be. Therefore, a less stringent process for amending the Constitution was established in Article V.

...
Wikipedia