70 Fun Facts About US Constitution

In which building did the delegates meet to draft the Constitution in the summer of 1787?

The same room had hosted the signing of the Declaration of Independence eleven years earlier.

In what year was the U.S. Constitution signed by the convention delegates?

Signing came on September 17, a date now marked every year as Constitution Day.

How many times has the Constitution been amended since it took effect in 1789?

The first ten arrived together in 1791 and the most recent, on congressional pay, in 1992.

What collective name is given to the first ten amendments?

They were added in 1791 to honour a promise made to critics during the ratification debates.

The Constitution superseded which earlier framework of national government on March 4, 1789?

Under the old system the chief problem, in Washington's words, was simply "no money".

Which three words open the Preamble to the Constitution?

The phrase signalled that the people, not the states, were the source of the government's authority.

Which Pennsylvania delegate is credited with mainly writing the Preamble?

His draft replaced a list of the thirteen states with "of the United States" and added the six goals.

Whom did the delegates unanimously elect as president of the Constitutional Convention?

Adams and Jefferson were both abroad as diplomats and took no part in the convention.

Which of the thirteen states refused to send any delegates to the convention?

It also became the last of the original states to ratify, holding out until May 1790.

How many states had to ratify before the Constitution could take effect?

Delegates chose nine, roughly two-thirds, because they suspected at least one state would never sign on.

Which state was the first to ratify the Constitution, by a unanimous 30-0 vote?

Its licence plates still carry the boast "The First State".

Which state's ratification on June 21, 1788, was the ninth and made the Constitution operative?

Virginia and New York followed within weeks, but the deed was already done.

Who was the calligrapher who engrossed the original Constitution on parchment?

He was assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and did the job over a single weekend.

How many delegates signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787?

Fifty-five men attended at some point, but thirteen had left and three present refused to sign.

Which Virginia delegate refused to sign the Constitution without a written list of rights?

His Virginia Declaration of Rights later fed directly into the amendments of 1791.

Franklin mused about a rising or setting sun painted on what object in the convention hall?

He decided it was rising, not setting, once the document was signed.

Whose detailed notes of the secret convention debates were not published until after his death in 1836?

The official secretary, William Jackson, kept records so brief that Madison's notes became the main record.

Under what shared pseudonym were the Federalist Papers published?

The 85 essays were written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay to win over New York voters.

How many essays make up the Federalist Papers?

The first 77 ran in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788.

Which proposal kept a one-chamber Congress in which every state had a single vote?

Delegates rejected it on June 19, 1787, by seven states to three.

The Great Compromise, creating a House by population and a Senate of equal state votes, is named after which state?

Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of that state pushed the deal through in July 1787.

The Three-Fifths Compromise let states count three-fifths of those enslaved for what purpose?

The clause was effectively erased by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

How many articles does the original Constitution contain?

They cover the legislature, executive, judiciary, the states, amendments, federal supremacy and ratification.

Which article of the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary?

Article I covers Congress and Article II the presidency, so the courts come third.

What is the minimum age to serve as President of the United States?

The president must also have lived in the country for fourteen years.

For how many years must someone have been a U.S. citizen before serving in the House of Representatives?

Senators need nine years of citizenship and must be at least 30 years old.

Who presides over the Senate when a President is tried on impeachment charges?

Conviction needs the votes of two-thirds of the senators present.

Which chamber holds the sole power of impeachment?

The House impeaches, then appoints "managers" to prosecute the case at the Senate trial.

According to Article III, federal judges hold their offices for how long?

In practice that means life tenure unless a judge is impeached and removed.

A treason conviction requires a confession in open court or the testimony of at least how many witnesses?

Treason is the only crime the Constitution itself defines.

The number of Supreme Court justices has been fixed at nine since a Judiciary Act passed in which year?

The Constitution itself never says how many justices there should be.

The 1933 repeal of Prohibition was ratified by which method, used only that one time?

Reformers feared state legislatures were too beholden to the temperance lobby.

Which is the only constitutional amendment ever to have been repealed?

Nationwide Prohibition began in January 1920 and lasted almost fourteen years.

The congressional-pay amendment was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992. Roughly how many years is that?

The next longest wait for a successful amendment was under four years.

What grade did Gregory Watson get for the 1982 paper that launched the congressional-pay amendment campaign?

He appealed and lost, then spent a decade lobbying state legislatures until the amendment passed.

Which state provided the decisive 36th ratification of the women's suffrage amendment in August 1920?

A monument to the suffragists who won that vote stands in Nashville's Centennial Park.

A letter from which relative persuaded Harry Burn to cast the deciding vote for women's suffrage in 1920?

Burn was 24 and had been expected to vote against ratification.

The push to lower the voting age to 18 was driven largely by the draft for which war?

The slogan was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote".

Who was the first vice president appointed under the 25th Amendment, after Agnew resigned in 1973?

Less than a year later he became the only president never elected to either the presidency or vice presidency.

Which former New York governor was confirmed as vice president in December 1974?

He was sworn in on December 19, 1974, the second appointed vice president in sixteen months.

Which amendment limits a person to being elected president twice?

It took effect in 1951 but exempted the sitting president, Harry Truman.

Which president's election to a third and fourth term prompted the constitutional two-term limit?

Washington and Jefferson had set a two-term tradition that lasted 150 years.

The Sixteenth Amendment of 1913 gave Congress the clear power to levy what?

It overturned an 1895 Supreme Court ruling that had struck down a federal income tax.

Before the Seventeenth Amendment, who chose U.S. senators?

Direct popular election of senators began in 1913.

The rarely litigated Third Amendment restricts what practice?

One writer has called it the "runt piglet" of the Bill of Rights because it almost never reaches court.

The Twenty-third Amendment of 1961 granted 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?

Southern states had used such taxes since the late nineteenth century to keep poor and Black citizens from voting.

The Twentieth Amendment moved the start of the president's term from March 4 to which date?

It cut the four-month lame-duck period that had followed every election.

The Twelfth Amendment reformed the Electoral College after which chaotic presidential election?

The old system had produced a president and vice president from opposing parties in 1796.

In which year was the amendment abolishing slavery ratified?

Georgia's ratification on December 6 made it the 27th of the then 36 states.

Which was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments to be ratified?

It barred denying the vote on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established which principle of American constitutional law?

Chief Justice John Marshall used a case about undelivered judicial commissions to claim the power for the courts.

Which senator's 2004 amendment requires federally funded schools to teach the Constitution each September 17?

Before 1952 the day was called I Am an American Day and fell on the third Sunday in May.

Which Federalist Papers author went on to lead the Supreme Court for its first six years?

He later resigned to become governor of New York.

Where has the original signed Constitution been displayed since 1952?

It shares the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom with the Declaration of Independence and the first ten amendments.

Article V says no state may be deprived, without its consent, of what?

It is the one part of the Constitution shielded from amendment with no expiry date.

Which Enlightenment thinker's ideas on separation of powers is cited in Federalist Nos. 47 and 78?

Madison, Jefferson, Adams and Mason were all known to have read him.

Which Virginia patriot refused to attend the convention because he "smelt a rat in Philadelphia"?

He went on to lead the Anti-Federalist fight against ratification in Virginia.

In 1789 the First Congress sent how many amendments to the states, of which ten were ratified?

One of the two leftovers finally became the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992.

Which state judged the first ten amendments unnecessary in 1789 and did not ratify them until 1939?

Massachusetts and Connecticut also only completed ratification during the 1939 sesquicentennial.

Which delegate persuaded the House to append the 1791 amendments rather than weave them into the text?

Madison had wanted them inserted throughout; Sherman argued the original should "remain inviolate".

Whose 1963 assassination spurred adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment on presidential disability?

By 1967 the vice presidency had fallen vacant sixteen times.

Which convention secretary signed a note verifying four handwritten corrections to the text?

Jackson's note sits beside the signatures in the closing endorsement, verifying the hand-made amendments to the parchment.

Article VI forbids which requirement as a qualification for any U.S. office?

The same article also requires state and national officers to swear an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.

Under the Articles of Confederation, which state 'positively refused' to pay U.S. assessments?

No state paid its full share, which is why Washington summed up the Confederation's chief problem as simply 'no money'.

Article IV requires the United States to guarantee each state what form of government?

The same section also obliges the national government to protect the states from invasion and domestic violence.

How many articles did the Committee of Detail's draft contain before it was distilled into seven?

The Committee of Style, led by Gouverneur Morris, boiled the approved articles down to the seven-article final draft in September 1787.

Which chief justice got a 1795 recess appointment from Washington but was never confirmed?

He resigned later that year and was succeeded in 1796 by Oliver Ellsworth, a fellow convention delegate.

Barron v. Baltimore held that the Bill of Rights restricted only which level of government?

It took the Fourteenth Amendment and later incorporation rulings to apply most of the Bill of Rights against the states.

Where was the Congress of the Confederation sitting when the Constitution reached it in 1787?

Congress voted unanimously on September 28 to forward the document to the states, bypassing the Articles' unanimity rule for amendments.