The Amendments Project at Harvard University releases a searchable digital archive of the full text of nearly every significant proposed amendment to the Constitution since it was drafted in 1787. Tens of thousands of amendments are included in the archive — the first of its kind. Contact: info@amendmentsproject.org. 857-777-8261
Monday, July 3, 2023
Cambridge, MA — Since 1789, only 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution have ever been ratified. But in that time, thousands of attempts have been made to update America’s guiding document. These failed amendments reveal a great deal about the historical periods in which they were proposed and force us to consider how different (or similar) the country might look today had they been ratified — these amendments are some of the great what-ifs of American history.
In total, the Amendments Project has compiled over 20,000 proposed amendments, including 11,000 officially introduced in Congress and 9,000 more put forward through petition. Compiling data from congressional records, the Congressional Petitions Database, and online petitions, the fully searchable database is the most comprehensive archive of attempted constitutional amendments to date. The search feature allows anyone to sort amendments by topic, date, sponsor, party affiliation, and type (e.g., petition, bill, etc.).
The project is led by Jill Lepore, the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer for the New Yorker. Lepore explained the motivation behind the project in an opinion piece in the New York Times:
“No one has ever taken stock of this history of failed amendments, an America that never was but was wanted by some, and sometimes by very many, or even most. Americans won’t be able to agree anytime soon on how to amend the U.S. Constitution and will instead face the ongoing risk of ‘commotions, mobs, bloodshed and Civil War.’ Amending is what makes the Constitution everyone’s.”
In addition to the database, the Amendment Project website also features data stories about important failed amendments on issues ranging from abortion to the national debt to polygamy, written by Lepore and members of the research team. These analyses aim to both shed light on topics that continue to be relevant and model how researchers, teachers, and students might work with the Amendments Project's data.
The project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and Harvard's Inequality in America Initiative, and involves collaborations with the Comparative Constitutions Project and the Congressional Petitions Database.
To learn more about how this new database can be used, be sure to follow the project on Twitter and Instagram. The Twitter will feature an amendment-of-the-day series, highlighting some of the most interesting and surprising proposals from the archive.
Please email info@amendmentsproject.org for any press inquiries or questions.
