Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Website Makes Early State Constitutional History Accessible

Duquesne University has completed an update to its Pennsylvania Constitution Web Page. The webpage has many useful sources on Pennsylvania constitutional law, including contemporary materials and commentary. Of particular interest, it provides on-line access to documents from the colonial era and early state constitutional debates that would otherwise be much more difficult to obtain.

According to Co-director Joel Fishman:
The colonial constitutional documents are now available (Charter to William Penn, Great Law of 1682, three frames of government and the charter of privileges of 1701) from the Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau, along with each of the state’s constitutions in full text along with all amendments (1776, 1790, 1838, 1874, and 1968). The constitutional debates of each convention are now available in pdf format (except for two volumes from the 1837 convention still needed to be scanned) as well as the 1920 and 1959 constitutional reports. There are three treatises on the constitutions: Charles Buckalew and Thomas White on the Constitution of 1874, and Robert Woodside on the Constiuttion of 1968.

For more from Fishman, via H-Law, click here. For the webpage, click here.