On September 25,1788 twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution were submitted to the states for ratification. Contrary to what you may believe the first proposed amendment dealt with how the seats in the House of Representatives would be apportioned.
The proposed amendment would have limited the size of Congressional Districts to no more than fifty-thousand inhabitants.
In order to be ratified the amendment would have required three-fourths of the 13 states to ratify the amendment. It took 9 states to ratify the Constitution, so it would also have taken the same number of states to ratify the originally proposed First Amendment.
- New Jersey: November 20, 1789
- Maryland: December 19, 1789
- South Carolina: January 19, 1790
- New Hampshire: January 25, 1790
- New York: February 24, 1790
- Pennsylvania: September 21, 1791 (after rejecting it on March 10, 1790)
- Virginia: November 3, 1791
This proposed amendment is still pending, and in my opinion if the legislatures of any two of the following four states were to vote to ratify the amendment tomorrow, it would become our 28th Amendment.
The amendment is still pending and could be become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution as soon as two more state legislatures vote to ratify it. The only states that have not yet ratified the amendment are Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina and Rhode Island. In my opinion the only states that should be allowed to participate in the amendment process are the 13 states that existed when the amendment was first proposed.
It is extremely unlikely that the politically appointed lawyers on the Supreme Court will agree with my opinion, but the states and not the politically appointed Supreme Court Justices should decide.