The Constitution of the United States of America was written in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. Led by George Washington, a group of delegates from most states convened to debate in secret a text that was then presented to the states of the Union for ratification. In so doing they pioneered the concept of a special convention to create a written constitutional text and set the standard for the process of modern constitution-writing, not only in America but for many modern nations — a process in stark contrast to the British tradition of an unwritten constitution or the older classical tradition of allowing a single, wise law-giver to set up the system of government. All of this might be of merely antiquarian interest, were it not that disputes about the meaning of the text govern what is -- and is not -- valid law in the United States. This talk will set compare modern understandings of the historical process that wrote the Constitution of the United States to the theories of interpretation favoured by America's politician's and jurists.

Dr Nicholas Cole is a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College Oxford and the director of the Quill Project. He is a specialist in American Constitutional History. The Quill Project has developed a digital platform to explore the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Using primary source texts and first-hand accounts of the Convention, the platform allows users to track how the text of the Constitution evolved over the three and a half months it was negotiated. Tracking the document stages in this way helps readers to gain a clearer understanding of the procedures followed (or not followed) by the delegates as they debated and also establishes the context within which the Constitution’s foundational decisions were made.

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