There are 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The first ten are the Bill of Rights. The Eleventh involved lawsuits against states; the Twelfth revised the procedure for electing presidents and vice-presidents after the original system turned out not to work too well.
The Thirteen through Fifteenth are the post-Civil-War amendments, and they’re generally easy to remember. The Thirteenth abolished slavery; the Fourteenth is a grab bag about citizenship and equal protection; the Fifteenth purported to prohibit the denial of the right to vote based on race.
The amendments since the Fifteenth are hard to keep straight. Here’s how I remember most of them:
SiXteenth Amendment — income taX
SEventeeth Amendment — direct election of SEnators
18th Amendment — Prohibition (many people think the drinking age should be 18)
Nineteenth Amendment — women’s suffrage (not sure how to remember this one: “feminineteenth”? the push for women’s suffrage began in the 19th century?)
20th Amendment — sets Inauguration Day as January 20
21st Amendment – repealed Prohibition — drinking age is 21
22nd Amendment — limits president to two terms (22 has two twos)
23rd Amendment — gives D.C. representation in the Electoral College. Not sure how to remember this one.
24th Amendment — bans poll taxes. Not sure how to remember this one either.
25th Amendment — codifies the process for presidential succession. To be honest, I only remember this one because there’s a “West Wing” episode called “Twenty Five,” where Glen Allen Walken (John Goodman) temporarily becomes president after Zoe Bartlett is kidnapped.
26th Amendment — lowers the voting age to 18. I remember this one by process of elimination, because there’s only one left:
27th Amendment — restricts congressional pay increases; got a lot of publicity when it became law in 1992 because of its unusual story.
