Twentieth Amendment, Section 6:

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

The Twentieth Amendment was proposed by Congress on March 2, 1932, when it passed the Senate1 , having previously passed the House on March 1.2 It appears officially in 47 Stat. 745. Ratification was completed on January 23, 1933, when the thirty-sixth state approved the amendment, there being then forty-eight states in the Union. On February 6, 1933, Secretary of State Stimson certified that it had become a part of the Constitution.3

Footnotes

1

Cong. Rec. (72d Cong., 1st Sess.) 5086

2

Id. at 5027

3

47 Stat. 2569