Entrenched Clause - United States

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:

    We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.
    Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)

    ... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—’indoctrination’ we might say—exercised through the mass media.
    Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.
    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)