United States
As examples of inadmissible constitutional amendments, Article Five of the United States Constitution contains two entrenched clauses. One clause prohibited any constitutional amendment regarding the international slave trade. This clause expired in 1808. The other clause, still in effect, states that "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate". This has been interpreted to require unanimous ratification of any amendment altering the composition of the United States Senate.
However, the text of the clause would indicate that the size of the Senate could be changed by an ordinary amendment if each state continued to have equal representation. The clause does not appear to be self-entrenched; that is, it does not, by its express terms, forbid its own amendment or repeal. So it is possible that one could proceed by first repealing the clause and then abolishing equality in the Senate through a subsequent amendment .
The Corwin Amendment (1861), prohibiting a constitutional amendment with respect to slavery, might have become another entrenched clause had it become part of the U.S. Constitution.
Read more about this topic: Entrenched Clause
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
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“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)