is there a physical constitution somewhere that someone has to write knew stuff into when ever there’s an amendment?

19 comments

1. Kind of. There’s the original constitution from 1787 in the National Archives, but that doesn’t have any of the amendments on it, it’s just the fancy copy they had everyone sign when they wrote it.

2. Amendments to the constitution are kept in the National Archives.

3. I don’t think so. The OG Constitution didn’t have the OG amendments (Bill of Rights) written behind it. They just wrote it on a new piece of paper and ratified it and that’s how it went for the other amendments: just wrote the new amendment, pass it through Congress and states and when it reached the required votes, becomes constitutional law. The original document is kept and everyone prints a new copy of the constitution with the new amendment

4. When you are writing a law, there’s a process called engrossment that finalizes the language. The process varies from legislature to legislature, but the end result is a version that is the final authority as to the wording. No idea the mechanics for federal stuff but I feel confident in saying there’s a pretty clear process.

5. There’s quite a few hand written “original” constitutions. The bill of rights is a separate document. It contains the first ten amendments. It was an afterthought once the nation was formed.

   The actual constitution doesn’t really lay out many rights. It lays out the exact structure of the government with just an absolute ton of property rights, they were super concerned about property rights, probably because in a monarchy the king can just take your shit whenever he wants.

   New amendments are added into the national archives, but it’s not all in one book or anything. You can see it all, it’s online

   https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution

6. Welcome back, Grapp.

   No, the physical Amendments are added to a registry kept in the National Archives along with signed confirmation by the head archivist that they have been officially added to the Constitution. They’re separate documentation. The original documents from the 1700s are kept in bulletproof cases and rarely handled by human hands.

7. Yes

8. There is a physical constitution and there are several copies that exist of that version too because they didn’t sign just one document, they all had to also sign copies to send back to the states.

   As for amendments, there are also physical copies that are in the National Archives, but they are not on display because they are not famous, with the exception of the Bill of Rights.

9. I actually asked this in 7th grade to my social studies teacher, except I asked if there was like a running Word document they’d just make edits to.

   He just gave me a spiel about the whole amending process so I still don’t know

10. No, the “official” copies of amendments are all separate, other than the first ten (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights) which were proposed together. If you look up one of the later amendments on Wikipedia you’ll see a photo of the official copy.

11. Don’t know but that’s a good question

12. The National Archives keeps official track of these things.

    They don’t ceremonially write a new Amendment into it, but they do officially log that an Amendment has been ratified and record that Amendment in the National Archives with the official record of the Constitution and its Amendments. It is then published in the Federal Register (an official journal of the US Government, used only to publicly publish official government proclamations pertaining to lawmaking) and considered adopted. The amendment is also added to official archived copies of US laws along with other amendments.

    There’s still pomp and ceremony in US politics, but not QUITE as much as British. We still have fancy signing ceremonies for legislation where a paper copy is formally signed with great ceremony. We still have the ceremonial counting of the electoral ballots to officially elect our President (this was the event the January 6, 2021 insurrection was trying to disrupt). We still have the State of the Union address (formally it only has to be a written report, but a very elaborate ceremonial speech has been the tradition for over a century.

    The National Archives of the US describes the entire Amendment process here: [https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution](https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

    The key paragraph there is:

    >A proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States). When the OFR verifies that it has received the required number of authenticated ratification documents, it drafts a formal proclamation for the Archivist to certify that the amendment is valid and has become part of the Constitution. This certification is published in the Federal Register and U.S. Statutes at Large and serves as official notice to the Congress and to the Nation that the amendment process has been completed.

13. You can see [an image of the official certification](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2017/spring/historian-27-amendment) of the most recent Amendment to the US Constitution (the 27th Amendment) at the National Archives’ webpage.

    The 27th was a bit of an anomaly. A bunch of states ratified it shortly after it was introduced in 1789 as a part of an initial slate of Amendments that included what became the Bill of Rights. It languished and was mostly forgotten.

    In 1982 a college student Gregory Watson started a renewed effort to get it ratified. In May 1992 it finally received the last needed ratification.

    In modern times the language of a proposed Amendment typically contains language which requires that it be ratified by the needed 3/4 majority of states within a certain time frame (usually 7 years or so), and if it lacks the needed votes it is considered null. Any effort to revive such an Amendment would have to start all over again.

    But the 27th Amendment contained no such time limitation in its language. The Amendment reads:

    # No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

    Fast forward to this very week and Congress is facing down a budget deadline, with a few calling for withholding of pay until the matter is resolved. However, the 27th Amendment doesn’t just forbid an increase in pay, it forbids varying the pay, which includes decreasing their pay and arguably could encompass a ban on delaying their pay.

14. This whole thread reminds me of the comedian who woke up Ben Franklin and he sees our amazing tech world and still sees the old ass constitution and Ben goes “You guys didn’t write any more shit?”

15. The original copies of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments are at the National Archives in Washington DC. [You can see them, they’re on display!](https://museum.archives.gov/founding-documents#declaration)

    If I remember correctly, the original Constitution is on 4 big sheets. The Declaration of Independence is on one single sheet. When I visited ~20 years ago I think they had a copy of the Magna Carta as well.

    When an Amendment is passed, they don’t write on the original sheets or cross out text that is voided. It’s like how a treaty works, the official copy is “deposited” in the Archives and the Archives publishes the text of laws and other documents that are deposited that create numerous copies and records of the text that are valid. If the original page is destroyed, that doesn’t invalidate that part of the Amendment or Constitution that was passed and entered into the body of text that comprises the government.

    As far as silly ceremonies go, for us it’s probably the Electoral College and Congress counting those ballots on Jan 6th. The Presidential Inauguration is when the President becomes the President exactly at noon on Jan 20th. But I’m pretty sure they pre-swear in the new President that morning prior to the public ceremony in case there’s an incident that gets in the way.

    The Presidential Inauguration every four years is as close as we get to pomp and ceremony. As someone not in the DC area, the next biggest instances of seeing pomp and ceremony in the news are when the leader of an ally does a state visit and they [roll out the red carpet at the White House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_visits_to_the_United_States).

16. I work on digitizing different world constitutions. Amendments are published separately, but every once in a while, or not often at all depending, an entire constitution is recompiled, incorporating those amending laws.

17. We do have one in the library of Congress. I am sure a Google search can yell you how its updated.

18. This has already been answered, but I just wanted to say that this is a very good question. Especially considering that you’re right about how the UK would handle it. There would probably be a big bell that got rung and a very silly hat.

19. The amendments are in the National Archives, y’all are saying.

    But are they written on fancy paper in 18th century calligraphy with quill pens? Or did someone just print it out on regular A4 paper and stuff it away?