The text is simple. 'No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.' It was proposed by James Madison in 1789 as part of the original Bill of Rights. It failed to be ratified by the required number of states. It lay dormant, a parliamentary fossil.
Then, in 1982, a University of Texas undergraduate named Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing the amendment could still be ratified, as it had no expiration date. He received a 'C.' He began a one-man letter-writing campaign to state legislators. The idea, that Congress should not be able to vote itself an immediate pay raise, proved perennially popular. A slow cascade began.
On May 7, 1992, Michigan’s legislature voted. With that action, the 38th state ratified the proposal, crossing the three-fourths threshold. The Archivist of the United States certified it. The 27th Amendment was law. The process took 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days. There was no fanfare, no grand constitutional crisis it resolved. Its power is in its existence as evidence. It demonstrates that the amendment process is not a mere historical procedure but a living mechanism, capable of operating on timescales that defy individual human attention. It is democracy as geology—slow, incremental, and ultimately reshaping the landscape through accumulated, minor actions.