View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-is-the-us-constitution-so-hard-to-amend-pe...

When it was ratified in 1789, the US Constitution didn’t just institute a government by the people – it provided a way for the people to alter the Constitution itself. And yet, of the nearly 11,000 amendments proposed in the centuries since, only 27 have succeeded as of 2016. Peter Paccone explains why the US Constitution is so hard to change.

Lesson by Peter Paccone, animation by Augenblick Studios.