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Changing the Constitution
may fail to cure the cause of the problem. Constitutional amendments, in
other words, should be viewed as a last resort, not as the only recourse;
and certainly they should not be used for light or transient reasons. For
once they become part of the Constitution, for better or for worse, they
acquire permanency of a sort and cannot easily be corrected, improved,
or removed.
The fact that the people in the several States have amended the Constitution only seventeen times since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was
adopted, is testimony to the wisdom and genius of the Framers. Two of
the seventeen amendments—the Eighteenth and the Twenty-First—
cancel each other out because the latter repealed the former. This leaves
only fifteen during a period of two centuries. At least half of these reduce the powers of the States. Half of them also expand the suffrage. By
contrast, only one amendment—the Eleventh—reduces the powers of
the Federal government, and only four—the Eleventh, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty-Sixth—overturn a Supreme Court decision. The
States, it would seem, have contributed noticeably to the growth of Federal power either by accepting amendments that reduce their powers or
by abstaining from the practice of using their amendment powers to restore the rights of the States.
The Amended Constitution
The following summary of Amendments XI–XXVII completes this introduction to the constitutional principles of American government, bringing the reader up-to-date on formal changes of our political system that
have been made since the founding period.
a . a m e n d m e n t x i (1798)
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any
suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States
by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
Article III, Section 2 extends the judicial power to ‘‘cases or controversies
between a State and citizens of another State.’’ In Chisholm v. Georgia
(1793), the Supreme Court turned a deaf ear to Georgia’s claim of ‘‘sov-