50 Fun Facts About US Constitution

In which city did the Constitutional Convention meet in 1787?

Delegates sat in Independence Hall from May 25 to September 17, with the windows nailed shut for secrecy despite the summer heat.

How many articles does the original Constitution contain?

Plus a preamble and a closing endorsement carrying the framers' signatures.

How many delegates signed the finished Constitution at the end of the 1787 convention?

Fifty-five delegates attended sessions in total, and 74 had originally been chosen from 12 states.

Which state refused to send any delegates to the Constitutional Convention?

It was also the last of the 13 states to ratify, in May 1790, after a threatened trade embargo.

What document did the Constitution replace as the nation's frame of government on March 4, 1789?

Under the Articles, Congress could not even levy import taxes; Rhode Island vetoed an attempt in 1782.

With which three words does the Preamble begin?

Gouverneur Morris coined the phrase; an earlier draft followed it with a list of all 13 states.

Which Pennsylvania delegate is credited as primary author of the Preamble and the final wording?

He chaired the Committee of Style that distilled the 23 approved articles into the final draft in September 1787.

Who was the calligrapher paid $30 to hand-write the original Constitution on parchment?

He used four sheets of animal-skin parchment; conservators still do not know whether it was calf, goat or sheep.

How many states had to ratify the Constitution for it to take effect?

Delegates chose two-thirds rounded up, suspecting Rhode Island at least might never ratify.

Which state was the first to ratify the Constitution, voting 30-0 in December 1787?

That is why its licence plates read 'The First State'; Pennsylvania followed 46-23 and New Jersey unanimously.

Which state's ratification on June 21, 1788 was the ninth, putting the Constitution into effect?

Virginia and New York, the big holdouts, followed within weeks.

Under what shared pen name did Hamilton, Madison and Jay write the 85 Federalist essays?

Hamilton chose the name and wrote 51 of the essays; Madison wrote 29 and Jay only five.

How many essays make up The Federalist Papers?

Numbers 78 to 85 were republished in New York newspapers between June 14 and August 16, 1788.

Which proposal, presented by Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, became the basis of the new government?

Madison sketched it while waiting for the convention to start; it proposed three branches of government.

The Great Compromise gave every state how many senators, regardless of population?

Roger Sherman's deal kept proportional representation in the House and equal weight in the Senate.

For apportioning the House, the 1787 compromise counted what fraction of a state's enslaved population?

It sits in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and boosted Southern power in the House.

What is the minimum age to serve in the House of Representatives?

Senators must be 30 and nine years a citizen; representatives need seven years of citizenship.

How many years must a president have been a resident of the United States, under Article Two?

They must also be at least 35 and a natural-born citizen (or a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted).

Article Six forbids which kind of requirement as a qualification for any federal office?

Officials may say 'so help me God' in an oath, but nobody can be required to.

Article Three says federal judges hold office during what?

That phrase is read to mean life tenure, and their pay cannot be cut while they serve.

How many witnesses to the same overt act does the Constitution require to convict someone of treason?

The alternative is a confession in open court; treason is the only crime the Constitution defines.

An amendment proposed by Congress needs what share of both houses?

Ratification then needs three-quarters of the states; a convention of states has never been used to propose one.

How many times has the Constitution been amended since 1789?

Thousands of amendments have been proposed in Congress; only 33 were ever sent to the states.

The Bill of Rights consists of how many amendments?

Congress actually sent twelve articles to the states in 1789; Articles Three through Twelve were ratified on December 15, 1791.

Which representative drafted the amendments that became the Bill of Rights?

He wanted them woven into the main text; Congress instead added them as codicils at the end.

The Third Amendment restricts the government from doing what?

It answered the British Quartering Acts and has never been the primary basis of a Supreme Court decision.

Which 1803 Supreme Court case established the power of judicial review?

The 4-0 decision struck down part of the Judiciary Act; the Constitution itself never explicitly grants judicial review.

The Twelfth Amendment followed an Electoral College tie in which election?

Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr tied in the Electoral College, throwing the choice to the House.

Which amendment abolished slavery in 1865?

Mississippi did not ratify it until 1995, and the paperwork was not certified until 2013.

Which amendment, adopted in 1868, contains the Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses?

Its first section, written mainly by John Bingham, is the most litigated part of the entire Constitution.

The Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 bars denying the vote on account of race, colour, or what?

It was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments; New York tried to revoke its ratification in 1870.

The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, gave Congress the power to levy what?

It overturned the Supreme Court's Pollock ruling; the first federal income tax had actually been passed in 1861 and repealed in 1872.

Before the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, who chose US senators?

At the 1787 convention only James Wilson argued for popular election of the Senate; he lost 10-1.

Which is the only amendment ever to have been repealed?

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed it on December 5, 1933, when Utah's convention voted yes.

The Twenty-first Amendment is unique in being the only one ratified by what method?

Congress chose conventions rather than legislatures to bypass dry rural lawmakers.

Which amendment gave women the vote nationwide, taking effect in August 1920?

It enfranchised 26 million American women in time for that year's presidential election.

The Twentieth Amendment moved presidential inaugurations from March 4 to which date?

Congress's terms moved to January 3; the goal was to shorten the four-month lame-duck period.

The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits a president to being elected how many times?

Washington's voluntary retirement had set the tradition; it took 3 years and 343 days to ratify.

The Twenty-third Amendment gave presidential electors to which place?

It can never have more electors than the least-populous state.

What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment of 1964 outlaw in federal elections?

Five states still had one when it passed: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia.

Which vice president's 1973 resignation triggered the first use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment?

Nixon nominated Gerald Ford, who later became the only president never elected to either office.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment of 1971 lowered the voting age from 21 to what?

Vietnam-era draftees fuelled the campaign; the states ratified it in barely three months.

The Twenty-seventh Amendment on congressional pay was proposed in 1789 but not ratified until which year?

A University of Texas student, Gregory Watson, revived it in a 1982 term paper that got a C.

The 1972 Equal Rights Amendment fell how many states short of the 38 needed by its deadline?

Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman wrote the original ERA, first introduced in Congress in December 1923.

On what date is Constitution Day observed in the United States?

Congress designated it in 1952 as Citizenship Day; a 2004 amendment by Senator Robert Byrd added the education requirement.

The Constitutional Convention assembled in which Philadelphia building?

It met from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in the same room where the Second Continental Congress had governed during the war.

Which September 1786 gathering saw James Madison openly question the Articles of Confederation?

It had been called to sort out the protectionist trade barriers the states had erected against one another.

Which state's 1786-87 uprising showed Congress could not fund a state in trouble?

During Shays' Rebellion, General Benjamin Lincoln had to raise money from private merchants to put down the revolt.

Which South Carolinian sat on the Committee of Detail that drafted the first full text in July 1787?

The committee's report ran to 23 articles plus a preamble, presented after a recess that ended on August 6.

How many states voted in favour when the New Jersey Plan was rejected on June 19, 1787?

Seven states voted against and one was divided; the plan had kept the Articles' one-state-one-vote unicameral Congress.