When the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they faced a daunting question: how many states were needed to approve the Constitution before it could replace the Articles of Confederation and become the supreme law of the land? The answer, enshrined in Article VII of the new document, was nine. Also, specifically, the Constitution required ratification by nine of the thirteen existing states to take effect. This threshold was not arbitrary; it represented a careful balance between practicality and legitimacy, designed to create a functional federal government without granting any single state the power to veto the will of the rest Practical, not theoretical..
Counterintuitive, but true.
The Magic Number: Nine Out of Thirteen
To understand why nine states
