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The U.S. Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified by nine of the original 13 states a year later, is the world’s longest-surviving written constitution. But that doesn’t mean it has stayed the same over time.
The Founding Fathers intended the document to be flexible in order to fit the changing needs and circumstances of the country. In the words of Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph, one of the five men tasked with drafting the Constitution, the goal was to “insert essential principles only, lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events.”
Since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791, Congress has passed just 23 additional amendments to the Constitution, and the states have ratified only 17 of them. Beyond that, many changes in the American political and legal system have come through judicial interpretation of existing laws, rather than the addition of new ones by the legislative branch.
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