State Constitutions: The Blueprint for America

How do you build a nation from scratch? The founders didn't work in a vacuum—they had living laboratories in the form of state constitutions. These documents, written during the revolutionary fervor after 1776, provided crucial lessons about what worked—and what spectacularly failed—in constitutional design.

Dr. Beienberg walks us through the fascinating contrast between two state constitutions that shaped America's founding document. The Pennsylvania Constitution 1776, drafted in revolutionary excitement, created an overly responsive system with minimal checks on popular will. Madison and other founders viewed it as a cautionary tale of democratic excess, famously referring to it as the "don't do that one, kids" example. Its unicameral legislature, weak executive, and limited judicial independence demonstrated how "parchment barriers" alone couldn't prevent tyranny or bad governance.

On the opposite end stood the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, primarily crafted by John Adams. This document reflected a more realistic view of human nature, establishing stronger separation of powers, bicameralism, and judicial independence. Its robust bill of rights directly influenced the U.S. Bill of Rights, while its popular ratification process became the model for legitimizing the federal Constitution. This tension between Pennsylvania's optimistic view of human virtue and Massachusetts' more cautious approach reveals the philosophical underpinnings of American constitutionalism.

These state-level experiments provided the founders with real-world evidence about constitutional design. They showed that written constitutions could work as supreme laws while highlighting the importance of institutional checks on power. Rather than simply theorizing about government, they analyzed existing models to create something more enduring. Listen as we uncover how these forgotten state constitutions shaped the document that governs America today.

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Chapters

• 1:32 Welcome and Introduction
• 1:50 How State Constitutions Influenced US Constitution
• 3:21 Pennsylvania Constitution: The Anti-Model
• 5:33 Madison's Critique of State Systems
• 6:33 Massachusetts Constitution: The Positive Influence
• 10:32 Episode Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in a Year. Today we are talking about state constitutions and their influence on the US Constitution, and back with us is Dr Beinberg. So, Dr Beinberg, how did the state constitutions influence our United States Constitution?

Speaker 2: 1:04

So at a basic level, as we mentioned earlier on that, the state constitutions are successors to the colonial charters, so it is sort of really really floor level thing. They demonstrated that society's writing constitutions can govern themselves and that there's some valid utility in writing constitutions versus the English model where you have these sort of you know they're more sort of principles but they still can be changed. And so the historian Gordon Wood, for example, has written extensively about how, over the 1770s and 1780s, constitutions as like higher binding supreme law gets sort of normalized through this process of writing and rewriting state constitutions. So it's easy to sort of just gloss over that and jump to the specifics. But just even the basic architecture of writing a text for your society that will be seen as higher law is really important and foundational to what we think of as constitutionalism. At the more sort of specific level, I'd like to joke and I'll be a little bit sort of glib and oversimplifying here, but I'd like to joke that sort of the US constitutional creation is a consequence of the founders looking around and talking about both the Articles of Confederation which will be the subject of other podcasts, but some of the different state constitutions and trying to say all right, what do we see is working and what do we see isn't working? And particularly in Federalist 48, we were talking about this that they mention the Pennsylvania Constitution as the don't do that one kids. And so in many ways the Pennsylvania Constitution is almost the anti-constitution. It's the one that they look to and they say this was a mistake. It's an interesting experiment. There's a sort of nobility to what it was trying to do, but they were excited. Sort of nobility to what it was trying to do, but they were excited.

Speaker 2: 2:53

The Pennsylvania Constitution is produced in 1776, right after the Declaration of Independence. Shortly before the Declaration, the Continental Congress says start getting ready for independence, start writing your state constitution. And so they're all excited. They have this moment of self-government and they take it, and so they create this really, really, really responsive system. And so the basic logic of the Pennsylvania Constitution is we don't want to create checks on the people, we want the people to check government, and so they don't put, for example, a bicameral structure of two houses, sort of, you know, making sure that there's a stronger consensus for legislation. They have a relatively weak executive that is in fact chosen by the legislature, so there's no, in a sense real meaningful separation of powers. Judicial independence is relatively weak, but instead they put a lot of provisions in there, such as everything has to get sort of posted, all the posted before it's passed so that citizens can look at it. It has to be printed in a certain basically the idea is maximizing transparency If we make the government extremely transparent so that the voters are paying attention and the legislators have annual terms and so the voters really have an incentive to keep an eye on them and the legislators in turn have an incentive to be responsive. But the basic theory of the Pennsylvania Constitution is we don't need institutions to check the people, the people just need to be paying attention and sort of good results will follow.

Speaker 2: 4:18

But it turns out that, as Madison points out in many of the Federalist Papers, actually citizens can collectively come together to pass both incredibly terrible, inefficient, bad. Come together to pass both incredibly terrible, inefficient, bad, poorly thought out and sometimes even tyrannical laws. And so the line in the Federalist 4748 discussions parchment barriers and things right. The Pennsylvania Constitution is parchment barriers. You can't pass legislation unless it's gone through X process this much transparency. So there's a very famous document. We assign it in our intro government classes, james Madison's Vices of the Political System of the United States, and much of it is a critique of failings of the Articles of Confederation. But part of it is also a critique of the way that some of the state constitutions are operating. And he complains in that document particularly that the state constitutions have a multiplicity of laws, that they're just passing too much legislation in a hurry, that they're too mutable, that is, they're changing all the time and fast, and that they're unjust. But he doesn't cite the Pennsylvania Constitution by name in that one, but sort of reading between the lines, reading his conversations and other things in other federal papers, it's very clear that Pennsylvania is, if not the only offender, one of the chief offenders.

Speaker 2: 5:35

And by way of contrast, there's the other model, which is the one that very much influences the US Constitution in a more positive manner, and that's the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. This is primarily written by John Adams, and so John Adams you know the trivia question like Jefferson and Adams aren't really part of the founding of the US Constitution insofar as you know, they're off abroad serving. Really part of the founding of the US Constitution insofar as they're off abroad serving, but in one sense Adams is still a father of the US Constitution because he's the primary drafter of the Massachusetts Constitution, which does very heavily influence the US model. So it has, for example, a stronger governor. Again, it's not supposed to be the dominant lawmaking authority, but the state constitutions as Madison had pointed out in Federalist 48, had gotten so squeamish about executive power that they overly empowered the legislature. So the Massachusetts Constitution sort of strengthens the governor to create more of a balance between them as a check, versus just getting always rolled by the legislature.

Speaker 2: 6:38

It has an independent and fairly well insulated judiciary. It has bicameralism, two houses. It has a very robust Bill of Rights, much of which is taken verbatim into the US Bill of Rights or pretty close to it. Adams particularly drafts a very thoughtful, extensive Fourth Amendment, what would be the equivalent of the Fourth Amendment, because he's been inspired by the example of the general warrants that had sort of terrorized Boston in the 1760s and 1770s. So there's lots of specific provisions from the Bill of Rights, of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, of the Massachusetts Constitution that get ported over. Some from the Pennsylvania ones do too. But the Massachusetts Constitution very philosophically and Adams writes about this sort of explaining its logic, but it very much has.

Speaker 2: 7:35

This sort of old Calvinist bent of humans can in fact be flawed. They can be greedy, they can be power mad. They're not the sort of noble creatures of reason that the Pennsylvania Constitution crafters. There's sort of interesting tension almost between a kind of enlightenment optimism of the Pennsylvania Constitution and a sort of more dour kind of Calvinist Protestantism, the Massachusetts one, which is like no, actually, people will often be jerks, they'll often be corrupt, whether they're single or in a group. In fact, in Madison's discussion of the problems of the state constitutions he goes on this little weird aside. It's just tucked away in a big long paragraph where he says people will often actually be worse in groups than by themselves because they'll sort of egg each other on in a way. And so it's really fascinating, these little pockets of political psychology that we sort of know later, we test later and Madison just sort of flings them off as little asides.

Speaker 2: 8:33

But the Massachusetts Constitution really offers a model of dividing power, of checks, interacting, but also another thing that it does really well that Madison praises or excuse me, that Madison implicitly I guess I would say implicitly praises by criticizing the opposite in the vices is it has a popular ratification. Madison had always been troubled that the articles didn't have popular ratification. The Massachusetts one does. There's an iterative drafting process that eventually results in it getting sent out to the towns and the towns agreeing to it, and that's something that Madison thinks is really important that the US Constitution ultimately gets as well. So the state constitutional. The other states have other features that get talked about in the federalist papers and the convention, but the sort of kind of clear archetypes of the two are Pennsylvania, direct democracy, really responsive, that's the one. You optimistic about human nature, that's the one that we don't want to do. Massachusetts, much more realistic about human nature and much more institutionally complicated in ways to make sure that no branch can basically be particularly destructive without sort of the approval of the others.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Wonderful Dr Beinberg. Thank you so much.