Coleman v. Miller
Case Date: 05/04/2025
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Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939) is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which clarified that if the Congress of the United States—when proposing for ratification an amendment to the United States Constitution pursuant to Article V thereof—chooses not to specify a deadline within which the state legislatures (or conventions held in the states) must act upon the proposed amendment, then the amendment remains pending business before the state legislatures (or conventions). The case centered around the Child Labor Amendment, which was proposed for ratification by Congress in 1924.
According to Coleman, it is none other than the Congress itself—if and when the Congress should later be presented with valid ratifications from the required number of states—which has the discretion to arbitrate the question of whether too much time has elapsed between Congress' initial proposal of the amendment and the most recent state ratification thereof assuming that, as a consequence of that most recent action, the legislatures of (or conventions conducted within) at least three-fourths of the states have approved the amendment at one time or another.
The Coleman ruling—which modified the 1921 finding in Dillon v. Gloss—formed the basis of the belated and unusual ratification of the 27th Amendment.
As of 2009, only the Child labor amendment, Article the First, the Corwin Amendment and the Titles of Nobility Amendment remain technically pending.
The Coleman decision has been described as the genesis of the political question doctrine which is sometimes espoused by federal courts in cases wherein the court deems the matter at hand to be properly assigned to the discretion of the legislative branch of the federal government.
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