Quill’s mission is to promote better understanding of the documents that underpin peace and democracy, and guarantee our rights and freedoms. We also want to inspire young people from all backgrounds to prize those freedoms, value their history, and reach their full potential.

Constitutional law underpins the modern idea of a free and democratic state, holding politicians to account and guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of citizens. And yet liberal democratic regimes around the world are currently experiencing a crisis of legitimacy and trust. Political scientists call it ‘democratic backsliding’: the erosion of the norms upon which political life in a plural democratic regime relies, together with increasing public distrust of democratic institutions. In different ways, the stability and peace engendered by many of the documents we are working appears to be under threat.

Are modern democracies suffering from deep flaws in the structure of institutions, or from a cultural shift? Are these challenges unique to the twenty-first century or was it ever thus?

Understanding these issues is vital if this situation is to be reversed. Working closely with academics, legal scholars, teachers, and young people from all sectors of society, the Quill Project is tackling these questions through a new approach to legal history.

Our Founding Era Collection is the most detailed examination ever produced of the way in which the 1787 Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Reconstruction Amendments were written. Our work on State Constitutional History is pioneering, and our collections relating to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland promise unique insights into a hard-won peace at a time when many of its achievements are under threat as never before.