esolve that amendments are
necessary before considering specific proposals.[8] In the National
Prohibition Cases[9] the Supreme Court ruled that in proposing an
amendment the two Houses of Congress thereby indicated that they deemed
it necessary. That same case also established the proposition that the
vote required to propose an amendment was a vote of two thirds of the
members present--assuming the presence of a quorum--and not a vote of
two thirds of the entire membership present and absent.[10] The approval
of the President is not necessary for a proposed amendment.[11]

Ratification

Congress may, in proposing an amendment, set a reasonable time limit for
its ratification. Two amendments proposed in 1789, one submitted in 1810
and one in 1861, were never ratified. In Dillon _v._ Gloss[12] the Court
intimated that proposals which were clearly out of date were no longer
open for ratification. However, in Coleman _v._ Miller,[13] it refused
to pass upon the question whether the proposed child labor amendment,
submitted to the States in 1924, was open to ratification thirteen years
later. It held this to be a political question which would have to be
resolved by Congress in the event three fourths of the States ever gave
their assent to the proposal. With respect to the Eighteenth, Twentieth,
Twenty-first and Twenty-second Amendments, Congress included in the text
of these proposed amendments a section stating that the article should
be inoperative unless ratified within seven years. In Dillon _v._ Gloss
the Court sustained this limitation on the ground that it gave effect to
the implication of article V that ratification "must be within some
reasonable time after the proposal."[14] Congress has complete freedom
of choice between the two methods of ratification recognized by article
V--by the legislatures of the States, or conventions in the States. In
United States _v._ Sprague[15] counsel advanced the contention that the
Tenth Amendment recognized a distinction between powers reserved to the
States and powers reserved to the people, and that State legislatures
were competent to delegate only the former to the National Government;
delegation of the latter required action of the people through
conventions in the several States. The Eighteenth Amendment being of the
latter character, the ratification by State legislatures, so the
argument ran, was invalid. The Supreme Court rejected the argument. It
found the languag