NPR

The Zombie Amendments To The Constitution You've Probably Never Heard Of

They won't eat your brains, but technically, they still could come back to life. Not all the amendments that passed Congress have stood the test of ratification by the states.

The first 10 were easy. Since then, it's been an uphill battle every time, and some of those battles are, at least technically, still undecided.

We are speaking of the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and those first 10 are, of course, better known as The Bill of Rights.

They provide some of the most important guarantees of freedom associated with the U.S. Constitution — even though they were added years after the Constitution itself was first written in the summer of 1787.

It wasn't that the original framers of the Constitution didn't believe in freedom of the press or freedom of religion – or the right to own guns or have a fair trial.

They clearly did.

But many, including the influential framer James Madison, also believed these rights were implicit in the Constitution itself (and in the constitutions of the individual states). Madison and others considered a separate

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