The US constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation in 1789. It was drafted at a constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, using a blueprint from James Madison. The framers settled on a republican system with three branches of government, each checking and balancing the power of the others. The constitution's framers also wrote in protections for slavery: some northern delegates who opposed the institution on principle nonetheless yielded to their southern, slaveholding colleagues for the sake of unity, ensuring that slavery would endure for generations.
Almost 12,000 amendments have been proposed since then, but only 27 — less than 0.25% — have been ratified, giving America one of the lowest amendment rates in the world.
The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, transformed the constitution from a merely republican charter into a liberal one, enshrining freedoms of speech, religion and due process. The authors' vague language ensured that Americans — among them Supreme Court justices — would still be arguing about it 250 years later. In the 21st century the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment, reached in part on its placement of commas, ensures that individual Americans, and not just militias, have a constitutional right to own guns.
Article V allows the constitution to be amended with the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states. James Madison devised this mechanism as an alternative to Thomas Jefferson's preference for constitutional conventions every 19 years. Jefferson doubted that "one generation of men has a right to bind another."
The hurdle was surmountable in the 1780s but has become functionally insurmountable in practice. No amendments were ratified between 1804 and 1865, or between 1870 and 1913. The constitution was last meaningfully amended in 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18.
The difficulty of amendment leaves America stuck with the electoral college, which has produced five presidents who lost the popular vote. It also freezes life tenure for federal judges, an American oddity that entrenches and politicises the judiciary. Wyoming residents enjoy 68 times more influence in the Senate than Californians.
Because amending the constitution is functionally impossible, Americans have turned to courts to reinterpret it. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s the Supreme Court expanded civil liberties. More recently, "originalism" — the interpretive method favoured by the court's right-wing supermajority — has driven a conservative counter-revolution.
Three cases in the term beginning in late 2025 promise to reshape presidential power. Trump v Slaughter concerns whether the president can sack people at independent government agencies; the court seems likely to conclude he can, with the exception of the Federal Reserve, overturning a precedent from the 1930s when the justices ruled against an overmighty FDR. A case on birthright citizenship is likely to go against the president. And tariff cases will test the scope of presidential trade authority. The broader pattern is of an increasingly powerful presidency, enabled by a court that has been content to wave through gradual increases in presidential authority as Congress has stood aside. Trump v United States expanded presidential immunity from prosecution beyond most court-watchers' expectations, and the administration has often got what it sought on the court's shadow docket with scant, if any, explanation.
Brazil's constitution has been amended more than 130 times since 1988. Mexico's has received 737 amendments in a century. Germany's constitution, with some 60 amendments since 1949, may represent a more balanced approach.
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