How Often Each Constitution Has Been Amended

India. Land reform and property, repeatedly from 1951 to 1978; reorganisation of States; reservation, from the First Amendment's article 15(4) to the Hundred and Third's economically weaker sections; the Emergency amendments of 1975 to 1976 and their reversal in 1978; the anti-defection Tenth Schedule in 1985; local government in 1992; the goods and services tax in 2016. A far wider range, and much of it is ordinary policy that happens to be in the Constitution.

Germany. Emergency provisions in 1968; reunification in 1990; European integration in article 23; the finance constitution and the debt brake.

Switzerland. Overwhelmingly popular initiatives on discrete policy questions.

A worked example

Compare two amendments made in the same decade.

The Twenty Sixth Amendment, United States, 1971. Lowered the voting age to eighteen. Proposed in March, ratified by thirty eight States in about three months, the fastest in American history, because there was consensus.

The Forty Second Amendment, India, 1976. Changed the Preamble, inserted Part IVA, extended the life of legislatures, curtailed judicial review, gave the directive principles primacy over articles 14 and 19, and inserted article 368(4) and (5), among fifty nine sections. Passed during the Emergency by a Parliament whose term had been extended.

The comparison shows that frequency and significance are different measures, and that a procedure's difficulty is only one variable: what matters is who controls the actors whose agreement is required.

The cases

Facts. Minerva Mills Ltd. v. Union of India, AIR 1980 SC 1789, challenged sections 4 and 55 of the Forty Second Amendment.

Held, by the Court. Both void; the limited nature of the amending power is a basic feature, and so is the harmony and balance between Parts III and IV.

Why it matters here. It is the answer to the observation that India's procedure is easy: the frequency of amendment produced the doctrine that limits it, and the two facts are connected.

Facts. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), concerned how long a proposed amendment remains open where Congress has fixed no period.

Held. A political question, with the ultimate authority in Congress.

Why it matters here. It explains the Twenty Seventh Amendment, ratified two hundred and two years after proposal, which is the extreme case of a slow procedure.

Distinctions

What beginners get wrong

"India amends easily because Indians do not respect the Constitution." The explanation is structural: the Constitution contains matters other systems leave to ordinary law, and the procedure can be satisfied by a party with a large mandate.

"The American Constitution has not changed since 1992." The text has not. The Constitution has changed a great deal, through decisions such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).

"Frequent amendment means instability." Switzerland amends constantly and is among the most stable polities in the world.

Limits and criticism

Counting is a poor measure, because amendments differ enormously in significance and because a single Indian amendment may contain fifty nine sections.

Interpretive change is invisible to any count.

The figures move. An answer should give the two settled numbers and describe the rest qualitatively.

Quick revision

1. United States: twenty seven since 1789; first ten in 1791; nothing since 1992.
2. India: more than a hundred since 1950, beginning in 1951.
3. Germany: more than sixty since 1949. Switzerland: very frequent. Ireland: about forty referendums. Canada: few since 1982.
4. Four reasons: length and specificity; demandingness; number of actors; availability of other routes.
5. Subject matter differs: American amendments are structural and about the franchise; Indian amendments include ordinary policy.
6. The Twenty Sixth Amendment took about three months; the Twenty Seventh took two hundred and two years.
7. Minerva Mills: frequency produced the doctrine that limits it.

Test yourself

1. Give the amendment counts for the United States and India and explain the difference. Twenty seven American amendments in two hundred and thirty seven years, and more than a hundred Indian amendments in seventy five. The difference is structural: the Indian Constitution is far longer and contains matters other systems leave to ordinary law, so it must be amended when those matters change; and article 368's special majority can be satisfied by a single party with a large mandate, whereas Article V requires two thirds of both Houses of Congress and thirty eight State legislatures.

2. Why is counting amendments a poor measure of anything? Because amendments differ enormously in significance: the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and the Twenty Seventh concerns congressional pay; the Indian Forty Second Amendment contained fifty nine sections and the Sixty First changed one word in article 326. And because the count is blind to constitutional change achieved by interpretation, which in a rigid system is the larger part.

3. What does the Twenty Sixth Amendment show? That the American procedure works quickly where consensus exists. It lowered the voting age to eighteen, was proposed in March 1971 and ratified by thirty eight States in about three months, the fastest ratification in American history. The difficulty of Article V is therefore about the absence of consensus rather than about the mechanics.

4. How should the frequency figures be used in an answer? As evidence for a structural explanation rather than as a conclusion. Give the settled numbers for the United States and India, describe the others qualitatively, and then explain the pattern by reference to the length and specificity of the text, the demandingness of the procedure, the number of institutional actors, and whether interpretation provides an alternative route to change.