amendment
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia.
Related to amendment: Fifth Amendment, Amendment 2
amendment,
in law, alteration of the provisions of a legal document. The term usually refers to the alteration of a statutestatute,in law, a formal, written enactment by the authorized powers of a state. The term is usually not applied to a written constitution but is restricted to the enactments of a legislature.
..... Click the link for more information. or a constitutionconstitution,
fundamental principles of government in a nation, either implied in its laws, institutions, and customs, or embodied in one fundamental document or in several.
..... Click the link for more information. , but it is also applied in parliamentary lawparliamentary law,
rules under which deliberative bodies conduct their proceedings. In English-speaking countries these are based on the practice of the British Parliament, chiefly in the House of Commons.
..... Click the link for more information. to proposed changes to a bill or motion under consideration, and in judicial procedureprocedure,
in law, the rules that govern the obtaining of legal redress. This article deals only with civil procedure in Anglo-American law (for criminal procedure, see criminal law).
..... Click the link for more information. to the correction of errors. A statute may be amended by the passage of an act that is identified specifically as an amendment to it or by a new statute that renders some of its provisions nugatory. Written constitutions, however, for the most part must be amended by an exactly prescribed procedure. The Constitution of the United StatesConstitution of the United States,
document embodying the fundamental principles upon which the American republic is conducted. Drawn up at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the Constitution was signed on Sept.
..... Click the link for more information. , as provided in Article 5, may be amended when two thirds of each house of Congress approves a proposed amendment (approval by the president is not required), and three fourths of the states thereafter ratify it, sometimes within a set period. Congress decides whether state ratification shall be by vote of the legislatures or by popularly elected conventions. Only in the case of the Twenty-first Amendment (repealing prohibition) has the convention system been used. In many U.S. states, a proposed amendment to the state constitution must be submitted to the voters in a referendum.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™ Copyright © 2013, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/
amendment
A modification to a building’s contract documents.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.