This is the 99% of visible breakdown of the Constitution. I'm Roman Mars. And I'm Elizabeth

Joe. Today we are discussing Article 5, which lays out the ways to amend the Constitution.

And from the beginning of this series, we knew there was only one person we wanted to have for this episode, historian and writer Jill Lepore.

Jill is an American history professor at Harvard, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of one of my favorite books, Bees Truths, a history of the United States.

This fall she published a new book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution,

and Jill tells the history of the Constitution through amendments, ones that succeeded and

ones that failed. Article 5 is just one long sentence. One long, boring sentence. Here it is.

The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments

to this Constitution, or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several

states shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case, shall be valid

to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution when ratified by the legislatures

of three-fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof,

as one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

Provided that no amendment shall be made prior to the year 1,808,

shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the

first article, and that no state without its consent shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the

Senate. In her book, Jol Lippur argues that the Constitution is designed. It is truly meant

to be amended. And before we go any further, it's important to

define what a constitutional amendment really is, because the definition is broader than what

most people probably think. The word amendment just keeps taking on all these adjectives.

So legal scholars like to talk about formal Article 5 amendments.

And a formal Article 5 amendment is a constitutional amendment that is properly adopted and ratified

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