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When was the US Constitution last amended?

When was the US Constitution last amended?
7 May 1992
The 27th Amendment, on congressional pay

It was proposed in 1789 as part of the original package that became the Bill of Rights, and took 202 years and 224 days to ratify — by a wide margin the longest gap between proposal and ratification in American history. It was revived in 1982 by a University of Texas undergraduate, Gregory Watson, who wrote a paper arguing it was still live, received a C, and then spent a decade lobbying state legislatures until it passed.

What
The 27th Amendment, on congressional pay
When
7 May 1992
Category
Countries and borders
Could this change?
Yes. This streak could end, and if it does this page becomes a historical note rather than an answer.

Countries and borders

Question When
When did a country last join the United Nations? 14 July 2011
When did Britain last change its currency system? 15 February 1971
When did the US flag last change? 4 July 1960
When was a US state last admitted? 21 August 1959
When did a European country last change calendar? 1923
When did the size of the US Supreme Court last change? 1869
When did the Union Jack last change? 1 January 1801

This page gives a date and never a "years ago". These pages are built as static files, so a computed interval would freeze at build time and quietly become wrong — which on a reference site is worse than making the reader do the subtraction.

Common questions

When was the US Constitution last amended?
7 May 1992 — The 27th Amendment, on congressional pay.
What happened?
It was proposed in 1789 as part of the original package that became the Bill of Rights, and took 202 years and 224 days to ratify — by a wide margin the longest gap between proposal and ratification in American history. It was revived in 1982 by a University of Texas undergraduate, Gregory Watson, who wrote a paper arguing it was still live, received a C, and then spent a decade lobbying state legislatures until it passed.
Could it happen again?
Yes. This is one of the entries where the streak could plausibly end, which is stated on the page rather than left implied.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked