FEDERAL PROJECTS

United States Founding Documents

The constitutional order of the United States faces exceptional challenges. Many surveys document the poor public understanding of America’s system of government and basic constitutional rights. Globally, faith in American-style democracy has fallen to unprecedented lows, and even within the United States itself satisfaction with America’s system of government has dropped to below 50%. The Quill Project's ongoing study of the foundations of the American system and the processes of debate and discussion which created it enables legal practitioners, scholars, students, and the general public to better understand America's constitutional democracy and the tradition of civil discourse through which it was created and can be perpetuated.

The Quill and ConSource projects have revolutionized understanding of the development of the American federal government through open-access digital publications and educational materials related to the drafting of the Federal Constitution (1787), the Bill of Rights (1789), and the Reconstruction Amendments (1864-70). The significance of these landmark moments in American history is well recognized, and this work has been widely welcomed by scholars, lawyers, and educators.