The only power that outranks the Supreme Court, and the hardest one to use: two-thirds of Congress to propose, three-quarters of the states to ratify, and no role for the President at all.
Article V is one paragraph, and it has produced exactly 27 amendments from more than 11,000 attempts. That ratio is the design: the framers wanted a Constitution that could change, but only when consensus reached far beyond a passing majority. Every step below has been exercised; one path never has.
Every ratified amendment has started here: a joint resolutionA measure (H.J.Res. or S.J.Res.) that travels the same path as a bill and has the same force of law. Also the only vehicle for proposing a constitutional amendment.Full definition in the glossary passing the House and Senate by two-thirds supermajorities. The President is bypassed entirely, no signature, no veto (Hollingsworth v. Virginia, 1798, settled it), because the proposal speaks for Congress and the states, not the executive.
On the application of two-thirds of the states, Congress 'shall call' a convention for proposing amendments. It has never happened, and its open questions are famous: could a convention be limited to one topic, or could it propose anything? Campaigns for a balanced-budget convention have come within a handful of states, and the pressure itself has moved Congress before, the Seventeenth Amendment was proposed partly to head off a convention.
The proposing resolution chooses how states ratify: by their legislatures (26 amendments) or by state conventions elected for the purpose, used once, for the Twenty-First (Prohibition's repeal), when Congress doubted sitting legislatures would vote to repeal. Modern proposals also typically attach a seven-year ratificationFinal approval that gives a measure legal force: states ratify constitutional amendments (3/4 required); the Senate consents to treaties (2/3).Full definition in the glossary deadline.
Deadlines have teeth and lawsuits: the Equal Rights Amendment cleared both chambers in 1972 and 38 states by 2020, but its lapsed deadline leaves its status contested to this day.
Each state votes under its own procedures, and the arithmetic is brutal by design: thirteen states, however small, can block an amendment supported everywhere else. Most successful amendments cross the line within a few years of proposal.
Source: National Archives, The Constitutional Amendment Process
The Archivist certifies that the required ratifications arrived, a ministerial act; the amendment was already law upon the final state's ratification. From that moment it outranks every statute, every executive orderA written, numbered presidential directive to the executive branch, published in the Federal Register. It has legal force only as far as the Constitution or a statute backs it.Full definition in the glossary, and every court decision built on the text it changed.
That is the amendment power's real weight: it is the constitutional answer to the Supreme Court. The Eleventh, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty-Sixth each overturned a specific Court ruling.
Stage-specific sources are cited on their stages above.
