The Constitution: Taxes, Voting Rights, and Prohibition

The Constitution has been modified 27 times. The most popular modifications are the very first ten: the Bill of Rights. What do you know about the others? John Yoo, Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, breaks them down.

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Script:

The Constitution has actually been amended 27 times. That may sound like a lot, but that’s over the course of practically 250 years.

And consider this: practically 12,000 amendments have actually been proposed. That fewer than 30 have actually made it through the change process is a testament to the strength of the Framers’ original design.

The most popular modifications are, obviously, the first 10: the Bill of Rights. Most of the others fall into three broad classifications.

Those that expanded the franchise– ballot rights.

Those that expanded the federal government’s power.

And those that set issues connecting to the workplace of the presidency.

Let’s look at each classification.

Classification one: those that broadened the franchise– ballot rights.

The 17th Amendment, validated in 1913, took the selection of senators out of the hands of state legislatures and positioned it into the hands of the citizens. The Framers had actually thought that state authorities would jointly have a better grasp of the state’s requirements than would ordinary residents. As political devices grew in influence during the 19th century, so did political corruption. A bribery scandal including the choice of an Illinois senator in 1910 tipped the scales in favor of direct election.

The 19th Amendment, validated in 1920, ensures that suffrage “will not be denied … on account of sex.” To put it simply, females were given the right to vote.

There was absolutely nothing in the Constitution that forbade females from voting. It was just believed to be unneeded. This was the basic belief held by men and women at the time of the Constitution’s writing.

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century altered this formula as more and more ladies joined the labor force. Ladies started to demand the right to express themselves as individual people. The 19th Amendment guaranteed that right at the ballot box.

The 23rd Amendment, validated in 1961, included the District of Columbia in governmental elections. Considering That Washington DC isn’t a state, it originally didn’t have any electoral votes. When its population grew larger than some states, it seemed to make good sense to give the district representation in the national election.

The 24th Amendment, validated in 1964, prohibited poll taxes– fees enforced by states on voters, specifically black citizens. By 1964, five southern states still had poll taxes on their books, a remnant of Jim Crow laws. By prohibiting the tax, the 24th Amendment ended a blatant type of discrimination.

The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, decreased the minimum age of ballot from 21 to 18. With soldiers as young as 18 combating in World War II, and then in Vietnam, lots of felt that if you were young sufficient to eliminate, you were old adequate to choose the leaders who could send you into war.

Classification two: the modifications that broadened the government’s power.

The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, offered Congress the “power to lay and gather taxes on incomes.”

As wealth disparity increased between farmers, employees, and a brand-new class of wonderfully rich industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan, so did the sentiment for an income tax.

The pledge was that only the rich would pay. History would rapidly show otherwise. The leading tax rate shot up from 7% to 77% to finance World War I, and then 94% to fund World War II. Of course, the income tax didn’t stay restricted to the rich, as any young individual getting his very first paycheck can confirm.

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The most popular modifications are the very first ten: the Bill of Rights. The 17th Amendment, validated in 1913, took the selection of senators out of the hands of state legislatures and positioned it into the hands of the voters. The 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961, consisted of the District of Columbia in governmental elections. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, prohibited poll taxes– charges imposed by states on voters, specifically black voters. By prohibiting the tax, the 24th Amendment ended an outright form of discrimination.