What does ratification mean?

Ratification means the official approval or confirmation of a constitutional document, treaty, or amendment by the required majority, the act that gives a proposed instrument legal force. The word comes from the Latin ratus, meaning approved or settled. In American constitutional law, ratification appears in several specific contexts.

The original Constitution had to be ratified by special conventions in nine of the thirteen states under Article VII before it could go into effect. New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify on June 21, 1788, and the Constitution took effect on March 4, 1789, with Virginia and New York having ratified shortly after the threshold was reached and the remaining states following over the next two years. Rhode Island, the last to ratify, joined on May 29, 1790. The conventions, rather than state legislatures, were chosen to underline that the people themselves were establishing the new government.

Constitutional amendments must be ratified under Article V by three-fourths of the states, currently 38 of 50, either through their legislatures or through conventions specially called for the purpose. Congress chooses which method applies. All but the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933, have been ratified by state legislatures.

Treaties negotiated by the president must be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate under Article II, Section 2. Failure to achieve that supermajority can defeat major treaties, as the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 illustrated. Some states require their own ratification of state constitutional amendments through popular referenda.

Ratification is a deliberate process, often slower than the original drafting. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, first proposed by James Madison in 1789, was not ratified until 1992, more than 200 years later. The Equal Rights Amendment, approved by Congress in 1972, fell three states short of ratification by its 1982 deadline. Ratification once given cannot generally be rescinded, although the legal status of state rescissions has occasionally been contested.

The supermajority requirements for ratification are deliberately high. They ensure that fundamental decisions, the rules of government themselves, command broad and enduring agreement across regions, parties, and interests, rather than reflecting only the momentary preferences of a bare majority.