Proposed U.S. Constitutional Amendments and Petitions 1789-2022

Over 11,000 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution in Congress from 1789 to 2022, plus more than 9,000 related petitions submitted between 1789 and 1949. The dataset was created and is maintained by the Amendments Project at Harvard University, led by historian Jill Lepore. It includes the full text of proposals and petitions, many of which never advanced in the legislative process.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in amendment proposal topics using the full text of over 11,000 proposals.
• Study the relationship between public sentiment and legislative action by correlating petition text from over 9,000 records with amendment proposals.
• Track the evolution of specific constitutional ideas by examining the text of proposals across the 1789-2022 time range.
• Identify sponsors and supporters of amendments through metadata likely associated with each proposal record.

Strengths

• Over 11,000 proposed constitutional amendment records spanning 233 years (1789-2022).
• More than 9,000 petition records providing context for public opinion from 1789 to 1949.
• Created by a named principal investigator and maintained by a research computing group at Harvard University.

Limitations

• Petition data coverage ends in 1949, creating a 73-year gap for that specific data type up to the present.
• Specific column structure, sample data, and total row counts for all components are not provided.
• The dataset's completeness for proposals 'never made it to Congress' is undefined.

Provenance

Source

Amendments Project (PI: Jill Lepore, Department of History, Harvard University).

Collection Method

Compilation of the full text of amendments proposed in Congress and historical petitions introduced in Congress.

Time Range

1789 to 2022 for proposed amendments; 1789 to 1949 for petitions.

Freshness

Last platform update recorded as March 31, 2026.

Geography

United States federal government (Congress).