For now, the Constitution has only 27 amendments. But at the end of last month, the Illinois General Assembly voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which provides that “[e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Illinois’s action brings the number of states that have ratified the ERA to 37, one shy of the three-quarters threshold established by the Constitution’s Article V. (If you’re doing the arithmetic, remember that constitutional law rounds up.)

It’s not implausible that the 38-state threshold will soon be cleared. Among the states that haven’t yet ratified are increasingly blue Virginia, purple Florida and North Carolina, and the ever less red Arizona and Georgia. With a majority vote of the legislature of one of those states, we might have the first addition to the Constitution in more than a quarter century.

But there are lots and lots of legal questions that a 38th state’s ratification would raise.

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