: On March 12, 1819 the State of Virginia, with the enactment
: and publication of the laws of Virginia, became the 13th
: and FINAL state required to ratify the above article of
: amendment to the Constitution For The United States, thus
: making it the Law Of The Land. With the enactment of Act
: No. 280, March 12, 1819, which was Voted, En Bloc, and
: publication of the Revised Code, the State of Virginia
: notified the Department of State, the Congress, the Library
: of Congress, and the President of their action by issuing
: to each a copy of the Laws of Virginia. [See VA 1819

: Images]

The real question is whether "the enactment and publication of the laws of Virginia", including in the published laws a copy of the Constitution whose text incorpoates this purported amendment, legally constitutes ratification of that amendment. As I understand it, nowhere in the act passed by the Virginia Legisature did it explicitly state that "The Titles of Nobility Amendment is hereby ratified" or any words to that effect. It simply ordered that a collection of the laws of Virginia, with the U.S. Constitution included, be published, and the published text included this amendment.

This state of affairs could have resulted if the members of the Legislature were operating under the mistaken belief that the amendment in question had already been ratified by other states, and that Virginia's vote was not needed. They would have pubished a copy of the Constitution as they believed it to be, which it seems is what they did. In the days before electronic communication, this kind of misperception is quite plausible.

Concerning the issue of whether it is 3/4 of the states which existed when a proposed amendment was submitted to the states by Congress, or 3/4 of the states existing when the last of them ratifies an amendment, that is required for an amendment to become part of the Constitution: the 27th Amendment, which prohibits Congress from raising the salaries of its members until after the next Congressional election, became effective on May 7, 1992, when it was ratified by the State of Michigan, which became the 38th state to ratify it. It had originally been proposed, as part of the Bill of Rights, on December 15, 1791. But at no point until Michigan's ratification in 1992 had it been ratified by 3/4 of all states existing at the time, so it didn't take effect until then. Michigan, of course, was not a state in 1791. So apparently it is 3/4 of current states which are needed to ratify an amendment, not 3/4 of the states which existed when the amendment was proposed. Most proposed amendments in the 20th century (such as the defeated Equal Rights Amendment) have had time limits built into them to prevent this kind of "sleeper" ratificatiion from occurring.