Constitutional amendment
Original research draft · October 2026
Working pattern
[Jurisdiction] Const. amend. [number], § [section].
Capture from the source
Amendment; section if present; adoption/status material when relevant
Check before you use it
Confirm whether the amendment contains numbered sections and which passage supports the claim.
Common error: Do not invent a section number for an unsectioned amendment.
Completed example
The National Archives' Fourteenth and First Amendment transcriptions were directly inspected October 8, 2026. This example verifies their displayed structure and identity, not constitutional doctrine, litigation outcomes, or every historical ratification question.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
Read the supplied source facts
The National Archives transcription of Amendments 11–27 prints five numbered sections under Amendment XIV. Its Section 1 contains citizenship language and restrictions directed to states, including due process and equal protection language. The same institution's Bill of Rights transcription prints Amendment I as an unsectioned paragraph. The exercise requires two accurate locators: one for the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment and one for the First Amendment's text. It does not call for a conclusion about a litigant's rights or about how a clause applies to any government action.
Why this works
The amendment number identifies which change to the Constitution is being cited, and the section identifies a real subdivision within that amendment. Do not use art. XIV, which would describe a constitutional article rather than an amendment. The selected locator reaches several related textual propositions; when the surrounding sentence concerns only one, name that proposition accurately and avoid implying that the whole section says only that. An amendment's adoption date, a proposed amendment's status, and a web page's review date are different facts and should not be substituted for one another.
When the facts change
The completed locator for the second assigned source is U.S. Const. amend. I. There is no need to append § 1 to an amendment printed without numbered sections. If discussing an originally proposed article in a historical document, distinguish its proposal number from the number of the amendment ultimately ratified; the National Archives page presents both the proposal and the ratified Bill of Rights transcription.
Official source material
Apply the receiving court or publication’s requirements. These working forms do not establish citation permission, precedential weight, or support for a legal proposition.