One thing to remember about the First Amendment is that it secures your freedoms (of speech, and of religion) from government action. "Congress shall make no law..." means that within reason, the government can’t stop you from expressing yourself. There are limits to that protection, though. A lot of the controversy surrounding free speech today has to do with things that are actually outside the Amendment's control altogether: when private companies limit speech on their privately-owned platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Many people overlook the last freedom of the First Amendment, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.  Without the right to ask the government to make changes, there’s a good chance many of the later amendments might not have ever happened.

Read the lyrics to Joey Stylez's song here and Cherry Glazerr's song here.

Back during the Revolutionary War, the American side was scrappy. We didn’t have professional soldiers at first, so we had to make an army out of regular, everyday people. Joe had a rifle on his farm, and then Joe became a soldier. The Founders saw a world where that might need to happen again, and they wanted to make sure our future militia had guns. People today debate the extent to which the Second Amendment protects gun rights now that Joe's rifle is no longer needed as part of the military. The Supreme Court decided in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment gives you an individual right to possess and carry a gun.

This right is not unlimited, meaning that the government can impose various regulations and restrictions on firearms and similar weapons, but the extent to which the government can do that without infringing on this right is still hotly debated. 

Read the lyrics to Sateen's song here, Flor de Toloache's song here, and Michael Richard Klics's song here.

This might seem like a strange protection today, but in colonial times, being forced to let British troops stay in your house was a very real possibility. Imagine if a soldier could come crash on your couch, eat all your snacks, and you couldn’t kick them out! The Founders wrote this amendment to promise that the U.S. government could never make citizens house soldiers in peacetime without their consent (or in wartime without a law passed by Congress).

In contrast to the first two amendments of the Bill of Rights, this amendment hasn’t typically been considered controversial and is rarely contested in the courts. However, some scholars use it to show that the Framers intended a constitutional right to privacy and therefore argue that a person’s private home should be free from government interference.

Read the lyrics to Palehound's song here and They Might Be Giants's song here.

The Fourth Amendment tries to strike a balance between the government’s need to provide for social order with the individual’s right to live in their home safe from most governmental interference. Under this amendment, the government must have a compelling reason to search or seize you or your home. This amendment prohibits the government from making unreasonable searches and seizures of private property. An unreasonable “search and seizure” can be something obvious, like a police officer entering someone’s home without a warrant, or it can be subtler, like putting a wiretap on a person’s phone. 

The word “unreasonable” in the Fourth Amendment obviously leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and the Supreme Court has tried to define what constitutes a reasonable search or seizure, in all sorts of Fourth Amendment contexts. For example, in the case Graham v. Connor the Court tried to bring more objectivity into cases of excessive use of force by police officers. Some people think it worked, while others think it did the opposite, creating more subjectivity by taking the point of view of the officer, not the civilian.

Most people probably know the Fifth Amendment because it's what the bad guys on TV say when they can't fool the police: "I plead the Fifth." In that case, it means, "I’m not going to say anything that might incriminate myself in this crime I committed."

But we shouldn't think of the Fifth Amendment as synonymous with guilt. It's actually one of the most important innovations in the history of law and is a bedrock protection for innocent people. History is littered with examples of innocent people being beaten or tortured until they confess to crimes that they did not commit. The Fifth Amendment is supposed to make that impossible or at the very least difficult to pull off.

There are other important protections in this amendment for people accused of crimes. The protection from "double jeopardy" is here. That means that for most criminal cases the government can't try you twice for the same crime. 

The right to a "grand jury" is also here. That is supposed to mean that only your fellow citizens, embodied by the grand jury, can charge you with a crime, not simply an angry prosecutor with an ax to grind.

At its most basic level, “due process” rights guarantee each citizen fair and equal access to all parts of the legal system. Without “due process,” the government could be able to force you to testify against yourself, send you to trial without an attorney to represent you, or deny you a fair trial all together.

Read the lyrics to Torres's song here.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/st...The Sixth Amendment has to do with criminal prosecution: what rights someone has if they’re accused of a crime. People can't be held in jail indefinitely and must be tried in public. People have the right to be tried in front of a jury. The right to confront accusers and witnesses establishes the practice of "cross-examination." Without the Sixth Amendment a witness could make a speech in front of a jury, and the person accused of the crime wouldn’t be able to ask any questions challenging that account of things. Criminal defendants also have the right to a lawyer. In a series of Supreme Court cases starting with Powell v. Alabama in 1932, the right to an attorney was extended to include defendants unable to afford legal fees. However, some people believe that the inexperience and heavy caseloads of court-appointed attorneys put poor defendants at a critical disadvantage in court.

Read the lyrics to Sons of an Illustrious Father's song here.

While the Sixth Amendment deals with criminal cases, the Seventh Amendment deals with civil ones. In civil cases, no criminal law has been violated. While criminal cases tend to involve actions that are considered to be harmful to society as a whole, civil cases usually deal with private disputes between persons or organizations.

If someone loses their civil case, they won’t go to jail. Most likely they’ll have to pay damages or make up for what they did in some other, less serious way. Still, protection from government overreach is necessary when charged with these offenses, and the Seventh Amendment preserves the right to a jury for civil cases. It is worth noting, however, that because civil disputes are allowed to settle out of court (and most do), they often never make it to the jury trial phase. In addition, civil cases in state court do not require jury trial.

Read the lyrics to Adia Victoria's song here and Nana Grizol's song here.

What makes a punishment “cruel and unusual?” That seemingly simple question actually leads to so many more: How uncommon does a punishment have to be before it is considered “unusual?” Who gets to define “cruel?” (Do we take a poll? Do we ask a doctor?) Is it cruel if we can't see the pain being inflicted? (For example, if we paralyze a person first, as we do with lethal injections, is that less cruel than if we can see the person writhing in pain?)

Furthermore, what does “and” mean in this context? Is a cruel punishment that is entirely commonplace prohibited by the Eighth Amendment? Does an unusual punishment that's not otherwise cruel pass constitutional muster?

The Eighth Amendment also prohibits "excessive" bail and fines, but given that we can't agree on what "cruel" means, you can imagine the debate over what constitutes "excessive."

Courts are kind of all over the map on these questions. The federal death penalty was briefly banned in the 1970s; now it is considered constitutional, but only some states allow it and only certain kinds of killings are approved.

Read the lyrics to High Waisted's song here.

At More Perfect, we affectionately call this one the “cover-your-ass” amendment. At the founding, some people were against having a Bill of Rights because they were afraid that it would limit their personal freedom. Basically, they thought that if we wrote down a handful of specially protected rights, then the rights not listed (the “non-enumerated” rights) would be in danger. To ease those fears, James Madison decided we should cover our asses! The Ninth Amendment is there as a catch-all, reminding Americans that our rights as citizens and human beings emanate beyond what is actually written down in the Constitution.

Read the lyrics to The Kominas' song here

The 10th Amendment says that all of the powers that are not specifically given to the federal government in the Constitution, nor specifically prohibited to the states, belong to the states or to the people. This is the amendment that's invoked whenever states think the federal government has butted too far into their territory. In practice, it means that the federal government cannot compel states to enforce federal laws.

Back in the late 1700s, the 10th Amendment was crucial in getting states to accept the new Constitution. Signing the document would cause a dramatic change for the 13 states. Before, states were very powerful, loosely united by something called The Articles of Confederation. The central government was pretty weak under the Articles, and it had a hard time getting states to do much of anything. The Constitution created an alternative form of government with a much stronger central government. Many people who felt allegiance to their states were extremely skeptical of this arrangement, so Madison wrote the 10th Amendment to reassure them that states wouldn’t lose all their power. For that reason, this amendment is sometimes called the “states’ rights” amendment.

There are ways the federal government has gotten around the 10th Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can encourage states to enforce its laws. For example, in South Dakota v. Dole, the Supreme Court held that the government could provide an incentive – in this case, funding for highway maintenance - if the state elects to set the drinking age at 21, but they cannot otherwise compel the states to legislate.

Read the lyrics to Lean Year's 10th Amendment song here.

The 11th amendment was initially passed for similar reasons that the 10th was passed: to reassure people who feared a devastating loss of state power under the new Constitution. When the Constitution was first being ratified, states were promised this kind of protection from certain lawsuits. However, just a few years after we passed the Constitution, The Supreme Court denied them immunity in a case called Chisholm v. Georgia. The 11th then overturned this case.

Over time, the Supreme Court has expanded the 11th Amendment to mean that states have immunity from lawsuits by their own people (in addition to out-of-staters and foreigners). Of course, in practice, states do get sued today — there are exceptions to this immunity which protect people's rights under the 14th and 15th Amendments, which were ratified almost a century after the 11th.

Read the lyrics to Field Medic's 11th Amendment song here.

Before the United States had the 12th Amendment, the vice-presidency was awarded to the presidential runner-up. The 12th Amendment was finally ratified after two very confusing and messy presidential elections. One was in 1796, where the first- and second-place winners, who then became President and Vice President, were from opposing parties. AWKWARD. The second was in 1800, where two people from the same party, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, tied for first place (shoutout Hamilton). The House had to vote 36 times before the tie was broken. After that huge ordeal, the two men ended up having to work together: Jefferson as president, Burr as Vice President.

Just four years later, the 12th amendment was added to prevent that awkward situation from ever happening again. Can you even imagine today’s presidential runner-up having to be the winner’s vice president?

Read the lyrics to The Octopus Project's 12th Amendment song here.

The 13th Amendment, along with the 14th and 15th, make up the "Reconstruction" Amendments. Taken together, they represent "Constitution 2.0." This amended and improved version of the Constitution slowly extended rights and freedoms to all Americans, not just the white male landowners preferred by the original document. It also dramatically altered the relationship between the federal and state governments. Only after this change did the federal government begin to protect individual rights against intrusion by the states.

The 13th Amendment led to slavery by another name, slavery through incarceration.  Today, criminals who work do get paid small amounts, but the pay can go to the prison for expenses and childcare, as well as victim funds.

Kash Doll, a Detroit native, was inspired to write her 13th Amendment song about mass incarceration:

"We thought this would be the one that would end it

But we still harassed

Still mass incarcerations

So much for the emancipation proclamation"

Bette Smith said she wrote her 13th Amendment song, which she calls "Happy Warrior," from the the point of view of the overcomer. "I wrote the song from a vantage point... that we're already free deep within our hearts," Smith said. "Wherever you are and whatever situation you find yourself, you can be at peace. You can find in your mind a place a freedom, a place of solitude.... When you're truly mentally liberated, nothing can enslave you."

Read the lyrics to Kash Doll's song here and Bette Smith's song here.

Arguably, the 14th Amendment was meant to deal with very specific problems resulting from the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Were former slaves citizens? (Answer: Yes). Were former rebels citizens? (Answer: Yes, except for the Confederate leadership). Would the Union be required to pay for the debts racked up by the Confederate states? (Answer: Nope). 

It's an Amendment that is obsessed with the immediate concerns of 19th century post-war America, yet it has become a beating heart of modern Constitutional law. For women, LGBTQ people, and racial or ethnic minorities, the Fourteenth Amendment is the primary constitutional defense against discrimination and oppression by the government.  Thurgood Marshall used the 14th Amendment to fight for racial equality in cases like Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools. Later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg took up Marshall’s tradition and used the 14th to fight for gender equality in a series of cases in the 1970s. And in 2015, the Supreme Court cited the 14th Amendment to uphold the right to same-sex marriage.

Sarah Kay's poem, inspired by the 14th Amendment, tells the story of her grandmother, who was interned during World War II in a Japanese American Internment camp. Despite the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, the Supreme Court upheld the internment of U.S. citizens based solely on their Japanese heritage in a case called Korematsu v. United States. In 2018, the Supreme Court said Korematsu was "wrong the day it was decided." The Court went on to uphold President Trump's controversial travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii. "Korematsu has nothing to do with this case," wrote the majority. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor accused the majority of "redeploying the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu" when they upheld the ban.

"I spend a lot of time now wondering what it means to pledge allegiance to a country that does not pledge allegiance to you," Kay said. "That's what I think about when I think about the 14th Amendment."

Read Sarah Kay's poem on the 14th Amendment here.

Before the 15th Amendment, in order to participate in federal elections, you had to be eligible to vote in your state. And states were in complete control over their election rules.

The 15th Amendment changed that — and it gave Congress the authority to regulate state elections for the first time. But Congress left other racial barriers to voting in place, like poll taxes and literacy tests. Finally, in 1965, Congress passed the groundbreaking Voting Rights Act, putting the 15th Amendment to use and giving it some teeth.

Read the lyrics to Aisha Burns' song here and Nnamidi Ogbonnaya's song here.

Before this practice was allowed, the government received money mostly from tariffs, or taxes on imported and exported goods. Over the years, the federal government had periodically taxed incomes, but the Supreme Court decided this was unconstitutional in 1895. 

However, over time, the need for an income tax grew. The global economy as well as the Progressive movement put pressure on the government to lower tariffs. Meanwhile, the government’s need for revenue grew. Because of these combined pressures, in 1913, we finally ratified the 16th Amendment. 

The strength of the federal government, both in its ability to project power militarily and domestically, was forever changed by the 16th Amendment. The New Deal, the military-industrial complex, and Obamacare are here because of the federal government's power to tax incomes.

Read the lyrics to Post Animal's 16th Amendment song here.

The old way of picking Senators — through state legislatures — proved problematic: Senators were often chosen in back-room deals, where state legislators could be bribed and intimidated by Big Business and other insiders. The result was that the hand-picked Senators were not serving the people. The 17th Amendment ensured that the senators were loyal to their constituents rather than outside interest groups by making them democratically elected.

Today, the 17th Amendment is the reason that celebrity figures like Kid Rock could even consider (or claim to be) running for Senator: it’s hard to imagine a state legislature picking a country rock star to represent them. But while the old way of electing Senators — by politicians instead of people — is anti-democratic on its face, the Founders had their reasons. The House of Representatives was supposed to be the "people's" body. It was the branch most beholden to popular will. The Senate was thought of as one step removed from that. It was supposed to be a more contemplative body, insulated from the whims of the people — and one that represented the states. From that perspective, it made sense to have Senators chosen by the state legislatures, instead of the people themselves. But ultimately, we decided the problems that came along with this indirect method of choosing Senators outweighed the benefits.

Read the lyrics to Stef Chura's song here and Donny Dinero's song here.

Various reform groups, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, argued that alcohol was causing various social and moral ills, as it enabled many working-class men to waste away their salaries by buying drinks at the saloon instead of supporting and spending time with their families.

Read the lyrics to The Slants' 18th & 21st Amendments song here.

Before the 19th, the idea was that women could have their voices heard only “by proxy:” the men in their lives (husbands and fathers, mostly) would listen to their opinions and take them into consideration when it came time to cast a ballot. But (surprise!) family members didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and on voting day, the men always got final say. This meant that men passed a lot of laws — about property rights and divorce, for example —  that made women’s lives a lot harder. Because of that, women’s rights activists known as “suffragettes” launched a decades-long campaign to get women the right to vote, and in 1920, with the passing of the 19th amendment, they succeeded.

Read the lyrics to Dolly Parton's 19th Amendment song here.

The 20th is the lame duck amendment. A “lame duck,” in this case, is a president (or any politician) who has already been voted out of office, but still hasn’t left yet. For much of our nation’s history, we were left with a large gap of time between when new politicians were elected and when they were actually scheduled to take office. This was because of a weird scheduling error made at the founding. In the case of newly elected presidents, the lame duck period was about four months, and in the case of Congresspeople, they had to wait over a year! 

Imagine that on the first Tuesday in November, after a new president gets elected, the old one has to put on a big, weird duck costume and wear it until they leave office in January. That’s not what happens; there’s no duck suit. But the lame duck period is still a weird time! On the one hand, the president doesn’t have much time left to get stuff done. But on the other hand, they have nothing to lose! Without having to worry about getting re-elected, they can make unpopular decisions without worrying about public opinion. In the early days of the U.S., that sometimes meant presidents and members of Congress would use their power do favors for their rich friends. That’s not a great look, so the 20th Amendment was passed, limiting the “lame duck period” to just a couple months.

JK! The problems with Prohibition could be seen almost immediately, and we hit undo. The most glaring problem was the “black market” for alcohol that led to violent crime and excessive prices.

Imagine the same thing happened today, but it was a prohibition on cell phones. As soon as the prohibition-to-be is announced, rich people get out ahead, buying up all the phones. And when the ban actually starts, those same people start selling marked-up phones on Craigslist to anyone who couldn’t afford to buy one before the ban started. A few years go by. Now, even those overpriced Craigslist phones are almost sold out, so people begin to try making DIY cell phones at home. But they’re not trained in wiring! People start getting electrocuted left and right. Disaster, disaster! Undo, undo!

That’s basically what happened in Prohibition – wealthy people purchased a lot of alcohol before the law took effect and sold it at a marked-up price to those who could not afford to take the same precautions. Then, “moonshiners” began brewing their own forms of alcohol that were untested and unsafe due to the lack of traditional regulations. As a nation, we saw the error of our ways and reversed course with the 21st Amendment.

Read the lyrics to The Slants' 18th & 21st Amendments song here.

Looking back, it might be surprising that for most of U.S. history, we didn’t have any limit to how long a president could serve. At the end of the American Revolution, we knew we didn’t want a king, but there wasn’t really any other blueprint for how things should work. Some people thought our first president George Washington would serve for life! But George Washington had other plans. G.W. was very aware that everything he did would set a tone for the new republic. In a 1790 letter, he wrote,

“I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any action, whose motives may not be subject to a double interpretation. There is scarcely any part of my conduct [which] may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”

So at the end of his second term as president, Washington stepped down, setting a precedent for a two-term max on the presidency.

Fast-forward to 1940. Our 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, became the first to get elected for a third… and then a fourth term. The U.S. was caught up in the Great Depression, and then we became entangled in the Second World War. The people wanted a strong leader to guide them through, so we kept re-electing FDR. But when he died in his fourth term, we, as a nation, decided that maybe we’d gone too far. The 22nd Amendment made official the precedent that George Washington set almost 150 years before.

The District of Columbia, or Washington, D.C., is a 68.34 sq. mile stretch of land in the U.S. that is not quite a state. About 700,000 people live there: they’re subject to U.S. law and they pay federal income taxes. But until 1961, D.C. residents couldn’t vote for president. The 23rd Amendment fixed that, giving the District three votes in the electoral college. 

Although the 23rd was a step in the right direction, some D.C. residents think it didn’t go far enough. D.C.’s single Congressional representative is non-voting: she can try to convince other politicians to cooperate, but she can’t actually cast a vote to represent the interests of the folks in her district. Since 2000, official D.C. license plates have protested that fact, borrowing from a slogan used by the American rebels in the Revolutionary War against the British: “Taxation Without Representation.” 

The poll tax was a fee that voters had to pay before they could vote. It was said to prevent voter fraud, but in reality, it was used — along with intimidation and violence — to minimize political power of African Americans and poor whites in the South. In 1964, a poll tax cost about $1.50, the equivalent of about $12 today. A $1.50 fee might not be a big deal to a wealthy white voter, but for many black southerners, that was a huge barrier. The 24th amendment was an important milestone in the Civil Rights Movement.

The 24th Amendment got rid of the federal poll tax in 1964. However, some people argue that the poll tax has reverberations today in other forms. Critics of Voter ID mandates say they put a burden on voting that makes it harder for poor people and people of color to cast a ballot. Proponents of those laws say they are important in preventing voter fraud.

Read the lyrics to Caroline Shaw's song here and Kevin Morby's song here.

This is a what-if amendment. What if the president dies in office? What if they’re unconscious, sick, or mentally unable to lead? Well, in that case, the vice president would have to step in, right? But what if there’s no vice president to take over?

Kinda dark, but these are important questions. By 1967, when the 25th was passed, one vice president had resigned, seven had died in office, and eight had left their posts to take over for dead presidents. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, people started thinking very seriously about this possibility. The 25th Amendment made an official plan: if a president dies or is incapacitated, the vice president steps in, at which point the new president needs to appoint a new VP. That way, the office is hopefully never vacant, and we won’t be left asking random people on the street to lead our country. Where the 25th Amendment is less clear is on what counts as presidential “inability” and who gets to decide.

Watch the amazing animated music video for Devendra Banhart's 25th Amendment song Devendra Banhart!

For much of American history, the voting age was decided by individual states, and that age was historically 21. But starting with World War II, in 1971, the Vietnam War was raging, and men as young as 18 were being drafted and killed in combat: it seemed pretty unfair to keep these young men from voting, when some of them were dying for their country. Georgia became the first state to lower its voting age to 18 in 1943. There was a By the time of the Vietnam War, there was a growing sense that if someone was old enough to fight, they were old enough to vote. The 26th Amendment was proposed on March 23, 1971 and ratified less than four months later on July 1, 1971: the fastest ratification ever!

The 27th Amendment was proposed in September 1789 and passed in May 1992. You read that right: over 200 years passed between proposal and ratification. Yep, that's an American record.

The 27th might never have been ratified if it weren’t for a University of Texas college sophomore named Gregory Watson. Watson found the proposed amendment when he was researching a college paper in 1982.  Watson argued that the amendment could be passed today because 1) the people who wrote the amendment never put a time limit on how quickly it had to be ratified, and 2) it was a really good idea. Under the original Constitution, Congress could vote to raise their own salaries, and the salary change could take effect during the same term when they voted for it. Which feels like *ahem* a conflict of interest. The idea in this proposed amendment was that any salary changes in Congress should go into effect after the current term. That way, a representative would need to seek re-election from the people before claiming their raise. Less greed, more accountability: great.

Watson wrote a paper about why the 27th amendment could and should be ratified today, and he got… a C. His professor wasn’t convinced. Nevertheless, he launched a years-long campaign to convince everybody else, and by 1992 he had 38 states on board. The 27th Amendment was finally ratified. More Perfect gives Gregory Watson an honorary A+.