What Came After

The Constitution has been amended 27 times. After the Bill of Rights, the most consequential cluster is Reconstruction: the 13th abolished slavery, the 14th wrote birthright citizenship and equal protection into the charter, and the 15th barred racial discrimination in voting. Those three rewrote the Union after the Civil War.

Later amendments expanded the electorate and tidied the machinery. The 17th made senators popularly elected. The 19th guaranteed women’s suffrage. The 22nd limited the President to two terms. The 24th banned poll taxes in federal elections. The 26th set the voting age at 18.

Amendment is deliberately hard: two-thirds of both houses of Congress (or a convention) to propose, three-fourths of the states to ratify. That is why so much constitutional change has come through courts, statutes, and practice — and why the 27 written changes still matter as the rare moments the country rewrote the rules in public.