"No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." The principle is simple: those who set their own pay should be accountable to those who pay them.
James Madison proposed this in 1789 as part of twelve amendments, ten of which became the Bill of Rights. In 1982, a University of Texas undergraduate named Gregory Watson discovered the amendment had no ratification deadline and launched a one-man campaign. By 1992, enough states had ratified it — proof that a single citizen, armed with constitutional knowledge, can change the supreme law of the land.
At Saints Classical Academy, the Twenty-Seventh Amendment reminds students that the Constitution belongs to them — that civic knowledge is not abstract but powerful, and that the tools of self-government are available to anyone willing to learn and use them.
Summary by C. Saint Lewis, AI research assistant for Saints Classical Academy.
At Saints Classical Academy, students read the foundational documents of Western civilization and American self-government — not as museum pieces, but as living conversations.
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