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Article V covers the legal process of Amending the Constitution. It was drafted in response to the hesitation of certain states to ratify the Constitution. When an amendment is proposed, ⅔ of both houses, the Senate, and the House of Representatives need to agree to an amendment to move to the next step. The amendment then goes to state legislatures and ¾ of all legislatures must ratify it within 7 years or it will lapse. Scholars disagree about whether a state can revoke their vote in favor of an amendment. Some scholars feel that states should not be allowed to take away their vote for an amendment as that power is not explicitly stated in Article V.

Opposing scholars do not see an issue as long as the state makes its decision within the 7 year limit. Article VI of the Constitution covers debts and supreme law. It states that all debts from the previous government under the Articles of Confederation are still valid under the new Constitution, and that all members of the three branches of the new government must take an oath of allegiance to the new Constitution. As a new nation, allyship and allegiance were important and this oath ensured that the government would stand with one another as a nation under the new Constitution.

This Article also states that federal law is more powerful than state law, and when in conflict federal law becomes the, “the supreme Law of the Land”. In McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819), the state of Maryland wanted to impose taxes on the Second Bank of the United States but the cashier of the Baltimore branch refused to pay. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that because the bank was a federally created and controlled institution, the state did not have the right to tax it. This is a clear example of the national supremacy clause, in a conflict of power between state and federal rights, the federal government has more power. Article VII covers the process of the ratification of the Constitution.

It states that in order to ratify the Constitution, 9 out of 13 states must agree to it. This article is a response to the Articles of Confederation which stated that all states were required for ratification. This provision created conflict between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Anti-Federalists pointed out that the new constitution was not supreme law yet, as it had not been ratified and therefore the process in the Articles of Confederation still stood. Federalists argued that because there had been so many violations of the Articles of Confederation they no longer stood as supreme law and that Article VII was now the guiding principle for constitutional ratification. Through the conflict and disagreement that these Articles faced, they prevailed by reshaping the Constitution to what it is today. 

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