Proposed Amendments to the U.S. Constitution 1787-2001

Since 1787, only twenty-seven amendments have been proposed by two-thirds majorities in Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states. During this same time, members of Congress have introduced more than eleven and a half thousand proposals, and states have filed close to four hundred additional petitions for constitutional conventions to propose amendments.


These four volumes edited and introduced by John R. Vile collect and update compilations of lists of proposed amendments and convention petitions that have been scattered about in a variety of governmental reports. They also reprint classic studies by Herman Ames and Michael Musmanno that analyzed amending proposals introduced during the nation's early years. The work includes texts of basic constitutional documents like the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, and the Confederate Constitution, as well as a comprehensive index of all amendments proposed through 2001. This fourth volume, which covers the years 2001-2021, replaces an earlier supplement that covered the years 2001-2010.

Dr. John R. Vile (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is a Professor of Political Science and Dean of the University Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University. His other books on the constitutional amending process include the Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues: 1789-2015 (4th ed., 2015), Conventional Wisdom: The Alternate Article V Mechanism for Proposing Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (2016) and Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary, and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution (2014). His recent publications include A Companion to the U.S. Constitution and Its Amendments (7th ed., 2021), Essential Supreme Court Decisions: Summaries of Leading Cases in U.S. Constitutional Law (18th ed., 2022), The Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of America's Founding (rev. ed., 2016), America's National Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner" in U.S. History, Culture and Law (2021), The Bible in American Law and Politics: A Reference Guide (2020), The Liberty Bell and Its Legacy: An Encyclopedia of an American Icon in U.S. History and Culture (2020), The Declaration of Independence: America's First Founding Document in U.S. History and Culture (2019), More Than a Plea for a Declaration of Rights: The Constitutional and Political Thought of George Mason of Virginia (2019), The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes in U.S. History, Culture and Law (2018) and Governmental Responses to Natural Disasters in the U.S.: A Documentary History (2018). He is the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of the First Amendment, which is now online at https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia.

xiii, [1], 15-171 pp.