The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, sometimes referred to as the “Congressional Pay Amendment,” was first proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, at the same time as the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments). Although the Bill of Rights was quickly approved, this Amendment failed when only six of the requisite eleven states approved the language. However, because there was no deadline for ratification in the language of the Amendment, it resurfaced over time and finally, 202 years later, on May 7, 1992, it was approved. In its entirety, the Twenty-Seventh Amendment states:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
The Amendment prohibits a change in the salary of members of Congress from taking effect until the start of the next term. In our system of checks and balances, the spirit of the Amendment safeguards against the conflict of interest which arises if Congress was permitted to immediately effectuate a salary increase in favor of themselves; it promotes the notion of accountability and provides voters with an opportunity to consider whether their elected representatives deserve a congressional pay raise or should be fired from public office through the election process. Further, members of Congress who are leaving office may be less incentivized to approve an arbitrary or unjustified increase in congressional pay.
The story of how this Amendment came to be is unusual. In 1982, ten years prior to ratification, a student at the University of Texas at Austin named Gregory Watson published a paper on the proposed amendment, kicking off his personal campaign in pursuit of ratification. Going state to state, he lobbied state legislatures for approval, and, in 1983, his efforts began paying off when Maine ratified. Nine years later, after Michigan became the final state to ratify the language, the U.S. Archivist at the time, Don Wilson, certified the Amendment thus modifying the Constitution. Mr. Wilson became the first and only Archivist to certify a constitutional amendment.
The Twenty-Seventh Amendment was yet another Amendment, as we have seen throughout our series, with a set of unique circumstances surrounding its ratification.
Of Note: Regarding deadlines for ratification of proposed amendments: The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) had addressed this issue with decisions ten years apart: In 1929, SCOTUS held that the Constitution authorizes Congress to “fix a definite period” for ratification of an amendment. Then in 1939, SCOTUS ruled that Constitutional amendments without a fixed deadline for state ratification remain pending business before the state legislatures or, if applicable, ratifying conventions, and still may be ratified by the states. Commonly, and as noted throughout our series, proposals to amend the Constitution expire in seven years.