Most Americans can name some of the key rights granted by the U.S. Constitution, but far fewer know the details about their own state’s constitution—documents that shape everything from voting rules and education policy to the structure of state government. Together, the 50 state constitutions tell a rich and often overlooked story about American democracy. Until now, however, much of that history has been scattered and difficult for the public to access.
A new interactive website, 50constitutions.org, is changing that. Developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School in a research partnership with UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, the site is making state constitutions and their comprehensive constitutional histories friendly and digitally accessible.
For the first time, the full constitutional history of every state is being collected in one searchable public resource, fundamentally expanding who can study, teach, cite, and engage with state constitutional history. The site already includes information about Minnesota, Montana, New York, Ohio, Utah, Arizona, and other states. More will be added on a rolling basis, and Virginia will be available in the fall.
The timing is especially significant. While 2026 marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, it is also the semiquincentennial of several of the nation’s earliest state constitutions, including Virginia’s. And in 2037, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the federal Constitution.
“If we pause to consider what was happening between the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the U.S. Constitution just over a decade later, it was a prolific period of state constitution writing,” said Jessica Kimpell Johnson, director of research at the Karsh Institute, who is overseeing the project’s research team at UVA. “State constitutions are a foundation of democracy in the United States. They have often been overshadowed by the federal constitution. But they are key to the rights, protections, and opportunities that individuals have in their own states.”
“State constitutions are a foundation of democracy in the United States—key to the rights, protections, and opportunities that individuals have.”
That history challenges a common misconception that state constitutions are derived from the U.S. Constitution. In reality, state constitutions have long served as laboratories for innovation and continue to play a vital role in American self-governance. Unlike the federal Constitution, which is amended infrequently, state constitutions have evolved regularly, providing a unique record of how Americans have adapted democratic institutions over time.
“Due to easier amendment procedures, state constitutions are more detailed and facilitate more frequent popular engagement with constitutional revision,” said D. Tinashé Hofisi, a research fellow on the project.
The differences are not merely procedural, however. State constitutions frequently contain rights and policy frameworks without direct federal counterparts.
Many states have constitutionalized women’s and socioeconomic rights, as well as redistricting rules. New Jersey defines its promise of education by guaranteeing every child between ages 5 and 18 access to a “thorough and efficient system of free public schools.”And Pennsylvania has its Environmental Rights Amendment, which ensures that people are entitled to “clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment.”
“To study state constitutions is to see democracy at work,” said Jeremy Odrich, a UVA alumnus and incoming UVA Law student who has been researching the project. “Tracing Virginia’s constitutional revisions, I saw the expansion of suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the promise of a public education guaranteed to every child. With each revision, I saw a constitution rewritten to reflect the values of each generation, not a relic preserved unchanged.”
The 50 Constitutions website is designed to make state constitutional history easier to digest. Rather than requiring users to navigate archives scattered across states, the website provides the first centralized resource for exploring every state constitution alongside its full constitutional history, including amendments and new versions approved over time. The goal is not simply to preserve historical documents, but to make them easier to discover and utilize.
The goal of the 50 Constitutions website is not simply to preserve historical documents, but to make them easier to discover and utilize.
And the website is already being put to use. In Utah, for example, the 50 Constitutions project was recently cited in a judicial order in a case that involved a citizen-initiated proposition about redistricting. Libraries, including the Library of Congress, have also begun directing researchers to the project as a resource on state constitutional history.
“The hope is to encourage engagement with state governments by offering a deeper understanding of their constitutions for not only legal professionals, but also scholars, K–12 students and teachers, practitioners in civil society, and the interested public more generally,” said Kimpell Johnson.
The project also has provided hands-on research experience for seven UVA students, including Odrich, who worked with experts across several institutions to trace the history of each document.
“This project gave me a sense of the collaborative energy that drives impactful research, and it gave me a chance to work on a large-scale research endeavor spanning multiple universities, working with librarians and faculty across institutions on how best to approach historical research,” said recent UVA Law graduate Olivia Haimerl, who was part of the research team.
“This project gave me a sense of the collaborative energy that drives impactful research, and it gave me a chance to work on a large-scale research endeavor spanning multiple universities."
This online database also offers a way to understand how constitutional rules have evolved over time and how different states have approached similar challenges.
“Reconstruction-era state constitutions, for example, expanded formal political rights, which were later rewritten to entrench exclusion,” Hofisi said. “Yet those same constitutions have since been amended again, reflecting the ongoing struggle to define ‘We the people’ in U.S. state constitutions.”
Read more about the Karsh Institute’s work on the 50 Constitutions project.