Analyze the processes by which the United States Constitution can be changed, and evaluate their effectiveness.

One of the most important features of the Constitution is that it can be altered, expanded, or contracted without replacing the entire document. The mechanism for changing the Constitution, the amendment process, is outlined in Article V.

In its more than two-hundred-year history, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times, a remarkably small number given the complexity of American government and the fact that the first ten (and the twenty-seventh) amendments were proposed during the First Continental Congress.