American Government / Gov 042 · Procedure · 60–90 seconds
Looking Up a Constitutional Claim
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A constitutional claim is checked by tracing it to exact text in Constitution Annotated, the Library of Congress's annotated edition of the Constitution.
Take the claim: "the Constitution guarantees each state two senators." Step one — identify the likely article; the legislature is Article I. Step two — open constitution.congress.gov and navigate to Article I, Section 3. Step three — read the clause: two senators per state, six-year terms. Step four — record the citation beside the claim: Art. I, §3, cl. 1. Step five — check the annotations for later amendment; here the annotation flags the Seventeenth Amendment, which moved the choice of senators from state legislatures to the voters. The claim survives, with its citation and its amendment history attached.
A claim that cannot be traced to a clause is not a constitutional claim — the claim may still be true as law or practice, but the Constitution is not its source.