2021届巴蜀中学新高考英语美国文化外刊[07]宪法修正案数量（含注解与翻译）

2021届巴蜀中学新高考英语 美国文化外刊[07] （含翻译与重点词汇短语注解） How many amendments does the Constitution have? Answer: Twenty-seven (27) 宪法有多少条修正案？ 答案：27条 Explanation:  When the Founding Fathers (or the men who made the U.S. government) wrote the Constitution in 1787, they wanted a government that would grow and change as America grew and changed. Everything they had written seemed like a good idea, but they knew that people might need or want to change parts of the Constitution later. 解释： 美国开国元勋们（或者说是成立美国政府的人）在1787年撰写宪法的时候，就希望政府能够随着美国的发展而发展。他们写下的所有内容似乎都是好想法，但他们知道后人可能需要改变部分宪法。 The Founding Fathers wanted their new government to last a long time, and allowing Constitutional Amendments was their way to make sure that the government could change to meet the changing country's needs. 美国开国元勋们希望他们的新政府能长久存在下去，所以允许宪法修正案是他们的一种手段，该手段确保政府能顺应不断改变的国家需要。 The word amendment comes from the verb to amend, which means to change something, so an amendment is a change to the Constitution. “Amendment”一词源自动词“修正”，它是改变某事的意思，因此，修正案就是对宪法的修改。 Because the Constitution is always changing and being reinterpreted (or read again and understood differently), many people call it a "living document." 因为宪法总是在发生变化和被重新诠释（或者说再次解读并以不同的方式理解），因此，很多人称之为“活文件”。 Amendments are added to the Constitution for many reasons: to overrule (or cancel or undo) a decision made by the Supreme Court (the highest court of the United States), to change something that was written in the Constitution, or to change something in society. 在宪法中添加修正案的原因有很多：诸如推翻最高法院的裁决，改变宪法中的某些条款，或改变社会中的某事。 For example, the Nineteenth Amendment changed something very important for half of the country—it gave women the right to vote in 1920. Before then, women were not allowed to vote. 例如，第十九条修正案作出的改变对支撑这半个国家的人来说非常重要——它在1920年赋予了女性选举权。在此之前，女性不能投票。 This Amendment forced society to change the way it thought about women and it eventually led to other changes and more equal rights for women in the United States. 这条修正案迫使整个社会改变对女性的固有观念并最终促成了其它的改变、使美国女性获得了更多的平等权。 A proposed amen