The Congressional Apportionment Amendment

When James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights in 1789, Congress sent twelve amendments to the states, not ten. Numbers three through twelve were ratified and became the Bill of Rights we know. The second on the list eventually became the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992. The very first — the Congressional Apportionment Amendment — has never been ratified at all.

It would have set a formula for the size of the House of Representatives, guaranteeing a minimum number of constituents per member as the population grew. Its aim was to keep the House large and closely tied to the people, preventing a small, distant Congress from ruling a vast nation. It fell one state short of ratification in the 1790s, and like Madison's pay amendment, it carried no deadline, so it remains technically open before the states today.

Had it been adopted, and read as some interpret it, the House of Representatives could today number in the thousands rather than its fixed 435. Instead, Congress capped the House by statute in 1929, and the size of American legislative districts has swelled far beyond anything the founders imagined. The amendment is a quiet monument to a road not taken — the first item on the first list of proposed amendments, still waiting after more than two centuries.