State Constitutions: N

Nebraska Legislature

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Ballotpedia: Amending State Constitutions - The Nebraska Constitution

• Pending Amendments
  • Indexes of Legislative Bills & Constitutional Amendment Resolutions
    • Under Subject Index, for any session (back to 1998), scroll down to Constitution
    • In Nebraska, rather than being identified by JR for Joint Resolution, bills seeking to amend the state constitution end in CA for Constitutional Amendment
• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • S. 343, federal bill to organize the Nebraska and Kansas Territories (June 16, 1856)

Nevada Legislature

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional provision

• Pending Amendments
  • ​Assembly Joint Resolutions
  • ​Senate Joint Resolutions
  • ​Also searchable by topic under “Constitutional Amendments, Nevada,” here 
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • ​Session Information
    • Resources on proposed legislation in sessions 1985 to present; more recent sessions work quite like the current session (under “Bill Information” for selected year, choose either Assembly/Senate  Joint Resolutions or find Constitutional Amendments, Nevada in the Subject Index); however some of the earlier years differ slightly in search capabilities, so it may be necessary in these sessions to have the number of a specific resolution at hand
• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • Historical Documents of Nevada
  • “The Making of the Nevada State Constitution” 

New Hampshire State Legislature

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional provision (articles 99 and 100)

• Pending Amendments
  • Legislation Text Search
    • This is the bill text search interface for the New Hampshire state legislature (called the General Court); they do not appear to have a subject index, so the best means of finding proposed constitutional amendments is a text search.  Entering ‘constitution and amend!’ appears to be a successful search string for returning proposed amendments as search results.
    • You can also select specific years to search, from 1989 to present; alternatively, you can leave this blank and return results from any year; however, if you choose this option, the results are not sorted by year
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • Use the link listed above; 1989 to present only

• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • 1776 New Hampshire Constitution
  • 1889 New Hampshire Constitution

New Jersey Legislature

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional provision (Article IX)

• Pending Amendments
  • Main Bill Information: Search by Subject Search
    • Subject – “Constitutional Amendments”
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • Bill Search
    • This is actually the homepage for the NJ legislature; however, from here you can select a legislative year under Bills on the left side of the screen (1996 to present), and for that selected year you can search bills by subject – use subject “Constitutional Amendments”

• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • New Jersey Constitutions
    • Much more than past versions of the state constitution, this resource also includes information on constitutional conventions held in the state, as well as select proposed amendments from 1882, 1927, and 1944.

New Mexico Legislature 

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional Provision (Article XIX)

• Pending Amendments
  • Legislature: Constitution of New Mexico (page 5)
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • Subject Index of bills for legislative sessions 2003 to present (Subject: Constitution of New Mexico)
    • These are PDF documents; you will have to locate the bill number of the amendment proposal you wish to research, then search it by bill number in the Bill Finder
• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • Legislative Publications – Constitutional Amendments (Arguments for and Against) (2003-present)
    • This publication of the legislature, available 2001 to present, presents the arguments made in debates on proposed legislative amendments for the designated legislative years
  • Piecemeal Amendment of the Constitution of New Mexico, 1911-2010
    • This document not only provides explanation of the amendment proposals from 1911 to 2010, it also provides an explanation of the different means of amending the New Mexico constitution and provides tables demonstrating the means and disposition of proposed amendments during this same period
  • Professor Guillermo Lux, The New Mexico Constitution and The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

New York State Assembly and New York State Senate

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional provision

• Pending Amendments
  • New York State Bill Search
    • Bill search interface; unless you know the bill number for the proposed constitutional amendment you would like to search, click in the circle next to Keyword to conduct a textual search; searching ‘constitution and amend’ will bring up any documents with both constitution and amend in the text; not all of these are proposed constitutional amendments, but many are; you will have to browse the results to pick them out
    • This can be used for legislative year 1999-2000 to the present
• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • Zimmerman’s Research Guide
  • The Rockefeller Institute, New York State Constitution – A Briefing Book
  • New York Constitution of 1777
  • New York Constitution of 1894
  • New York Constitutional Conventions and Constitutional History
    • Links to and annotations of several resources on the history of the New York state constitution

North Carolina General Assembly

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Constitutional Provision (Article XIII)

• Pending Amendments
  • Bill by Keywords
    • This link will take you to the bill search by keyword for the state; it’s keyed to letter C – scroll down to  Constitution, NC for a list of pending constitutional amendments
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • Bill Reports
    • For past sessions’ bills, there does not appear to be a search mechanism of any kind; instead, this link will take you to Browse Bills, which will allow you to see any bills from a selected year (back to 2005) that had some action taken on them that year
    • As these lists are rather long, the best advice would be to hit Ctrl+F and search the page for keywords that might bring up a proposed constitutional amendment.  To make matters more complicated, the language appears to differ from year to year, so no uniform keyword is apparent; for example, searching the page of 2005 bills with Constitution will not bring up any hits, because the one constitutional amendment in that year’s list is abbreviated Const’l (S1079); in 2010, in contrast, Const’l will not bring up any hits, because the one amendment listed is entitled Amend Constitution (H2079); if you are concerned about missing any potential amendments due to this vocabulary flux, you can search Amend, but this will bring up many more hits to amendments of various laws, so you will have to scroll through each hit looking for the constitutional amendments.

• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • North Carolina Constitutions
    • Past versions of the constitution, as well as a description of the amendments made to the latest version and an explanatory document on the state’s constitution
  • John L. Sanders, Our Constitutions: Our Constitutions: A Historical Perspective

North Dakota Legislative Branch

• Constitution

• Amendment Process
  • Amending the Constitution

• Pending Amendments
  • Proposed Constitutional Amendments
• Historical Amendments Considered
  • North Dakota Legislative Assembly
    • ​​This is the main page for the North Dakota legislative assembly.  From here, select a session (back to 1995) and for that session select Legislation: [year chosen] on the left side of the screen and either Legislation or Session Quick Links (it varies depending on the year chosen) on the right side of the screen.  Next, find Topical Index in the center of the screen and scroll to Constitutional Amendments.
• Resources, Artifacts and Documents
  • North Dakota’s Research Center Information
  • North Dakota Legislative History Materials (2001-present)
  • North Dakota General Assembly History (1985-present)