Toward a New ERA?

The Equal Rights Amendment is dead. But the faithful, led by Tip O’Neill in the House, Paul Tsongas in the Senate, and Judy Goldsmith in the streets, have begun calling it to arise, Lazarus-like, to live again. On May 26, the prayers of the faithful were partially answered, when the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution began hearings on S. J. Res. 10/H. J. Res. 1: the same Equal Rights Amendment that was first proposed in 1972. A two-thirds vote in each House would reanimate this once-dead amendment, although three-fourths of the state legislatures would then need to adopt it for it to become part of the Constitution.

Amending the Constitution is just shy of impossible. Of some nine thousand constitutional amendments that have been introduced in Congress, only 26 have been ratified—11 of them in the eighteenth century. Generally, conservatives do not favor amending the Constitution, and the proposed 1972 Equal Rights Amendment was particularly ill-favored. But should opponents of that ERA oppose every amendment that would set a constitutional standard for sex-based classifications? Perhaps not.

LO

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Lincoln C. Oliphant

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Equal Rights Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment is dead. But the faithful, led by Tip O’Neill in the House, Paul Tsongas in the Senate, and Judy Goldsmith in the streets, have begun calling it to arise, Lazarus-like, to live again. On May 26, the prayers of the faithful were partially answered, when the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution began hearings on S. J. Res. 10/H. J. Res. 1: the same Equal Rights Amendment that was first proposed in 1972. A two-thirds vote in each House would reanimate this once-dead amendment, although three-fourths of the state legislatures would then need to adopt it for it to become part of the Constitution.

Amending the Constitution is just shy of impossible. Of some nine thousand constitutional amendments that have been introduced in Congress, only 26 have been ratified—11 of them in the eighteenth century. Generally, conservatives do not favor amending the Constitution, and the proposed 1972 Equal Rights Amendment was particularly ill-favored. But should opponents of that ERA oppose every amendment that would set a constitutional standard for sex-based classifications? Perhaps not.