To um, slightly, correct Happy [which is completely irrelevant
].
The most recent amendment is the 27th which says that any pay raises Congress votes for themselves don't take effect until the next election cycle. So if, for instance, Congress voted tomorrow to give themselves a 10% raise [that would be shocking, wouldn't it? :rolleyes: ], it wouldn't take effect until next January, after the election cycle.
I've heard it's undergoing some legal challenges, though I don't see how they could hold water. It was one of the original twelve proposed to be part of the Bill of Rights but it and one other [the details of which are escaping me at the moment] weren't passed. The argument is how could it be valid when it took over 200 years to ratify? In more recent years, there's a deadline - if it's not ratified by date x, then it's dead. But there was no deadline on this particular amendment. It was ratified by various states over the years until the Alabama legislature ratified it in 1992 making it part of the Constitution
.
More info can be found
here .
Another reason for ratifying the 26th amendment was to give those 18-20 year olds - the ones were most vocal in campus protests etc. - another viable outlet for their political opinions. When given the right to vote, they had a say in the process of the things they were so adamantly opposed to. Of course, history has shown that they are, by far, the lowest voting group of all - that is, they vote in lower percentages than any other age group.
