Constitution
The Twenty-seventh Amendment: Congressional Pay
The Twenty-seventh Amendment says a law changing congressional pay cannot take effect until after the next House election; proposed in 1789, ratified in 1992.
The text
Originally proposed Sept. 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
In plain English
The rule. "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."
Congress may still change its pay. But no raise (or cut) can take effect until after the next election of the House, so voters have a chance to respond before the new rate applies. Cost-of-living adjustments set by an earlier law have been treated as consistent with the Amendment.
The history. It was the second of twelve amendments proposed by the First Congress on September 25, 1789; the first ten became the Bill of Rights, and the first of the twelve, on House size, was never ratified. This one was ratified by only a few states in the 1790s and then forgotten. A University of Texas student, Gregory Watson, revived it with a 1982 paper, and ratifications accumulated until Michigan became the thirty-eighth state on May 7, 1992.
It took more than two centuries, the longest ratification in American history.
What the Founders said
James Madison introduced the amendment in the First Congress in 1789. He saw it as a check on Congress's temptation to vote itself raises. At the Convention, the question of congressional pay had been debated, and Madison and others regarded the setting of one's own salary as an unavoidable conflict of interest.
states had adopted the principle in their own constitutions. Madison placed it among the amendments he proposed in 1789.
The Amendment had no deadline, unlike most 20th-century amendments, so it remained pending. The Archivist of the United States certified it in 1992, and both houses of Congress then declared it part of the Constitution.
How the courts have read it
- Coleman v. Miller (1939): the Court indicated that Congress, not the courts, decides whether a proposed amendment remains open to ratification, in a case about the Child Labor Amendment.
- Dillon v. Gloss (1921): an amendment must be ratified within a reasonable time, though it said Congress could set a deadline.
- Boehner v. Anderson (D.D.C. 1992): a challenge to a cost-of-living adjustment under the Twenty-seventh Amendment failed, the court holding that Congress's pay-adjustment mechanism did not violate it.
The Amendment has not generated significant Supreme Court litigation.
Why it matters now
The Twenty-seventh Amendment is one of the most surprising stories in constitutional history, and a testament to the self-governing character of the Constitution. A proposal made by the Framers, forgotten, and revived by a college student, became part of the document because the Article V process allowed it.
The principle it states is straightforward and has conservative appeal: those who write the rules should not be the first to benefit from them. Voters should have the chance to weigh in before a pay change takes effect. That idea applies well beyond congressional salaries, to term limits, pensions and benefits, and to the question of who bears the cost of Congress's decisions.
It also raises an old question about the amendment process: how long a proposal may remain open. A strict reader might hold that a proposal that sits unratified for two centuries has lapsed, but the text of Article V contains no time limit, and Congress, which has the power to decide, treated the ratification as valid. That outcome shows that the process is the people's, not the exclusive property of any one generation.