Season 2, Episode 18 | America’s Greatest Invention: Collective Constitution-Making

What if America’s greatest strength wasn’t just its leaders, but the way everyday people came together to shape history? In this episode of This Constitution, host Matthew Brogdon sits down with Nicholas Cole of Oxford’s Pembroke College, creator of the Quill Project, to dig into the overlooked story of America’s founding.

Far from being the work of a single “lawgiver” like Solon or Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and other revolutionary texts were born out of spirited collaboration. From town halls in Massachusetts to Virginia’s Fairfax Resolves, communities debated, revised, and ultimately claimed ownership over the words that would launch a nation. Cole explains how this culture of deliberation, grand juries, militias, assemblies, and conventions set America apart from revolutions elsewhere, transforming ordinary gatherings into the foundation of popular sovereignty.

Together, Brogdon and Cole trace how these practices not only produced the Declaration but also laid the groundwork for the U.S. Constitution and federal union. They explore how Jefferson’s draft drew on community voices, and how America’s deliberative spirit still shapes our civic life today.

If you’ve ever wondered what truly makes America’s founding unique, this conversation offers a fresh lens and a reminder of the power of collective decision-making.

In This Episode

• (00:11) Introduction and guest welcome
• (00:31) Origins of American deliberation
• (02:14) Jefferson and collective authorship
• (05:04) Spirit of the American Revolution
• (05:51) Colonial and local deliberative traditions
• (09:29) Fairfax Resolves and local assemblies
• (13:01) Community sense and delay of independence
• (14:33) Popular sovereignty and ratification
• (15:43) Variety of deliberative bodies
• (16:39) Parliamentary law and deliberative procedure
• (19:26) Grand juries and public service
• (22:02) Distinguishing public bodies from mobs
• (24:54) Non-importation agreements and authority
• (26:19) Compulsory support and revolutionary action
• (28:04) American Revolution’s distinctiveness
• (30:06) British and American deliberative traditions
• (33:22) Comparisons to English and European precedents
• (34:20) Ancient and English precedents
• (35:42) Crystallization of deliberative traditions
• (37:07) Federal system and popular constitution-making
• (38:26) The Quill Project overview
• (39:38) Quill Project’s Declaration of Independence work
• (41:12) Resource collections and acknowledgments

Notable Quotes

• (01:00) "Before the American Revolution, most constitutions were the product either of accident and force or the wisdom of a lawgiver. America's different. These things are written by groups of people who deliberate and worry about every word." — Nicholas Cole
• (03:01) "All of those things that Jefferson takes credit for are things that he did in concert with other people. He wasn't starting with a completely blank page." — Nicholas Cole
• (04:44) "The idea that human beings do their best work when they act together, that feature of American thought in the 18th century, was one of the things that really captured my interest." — Nicholas Cole
• (16:54) "There was an idea that there was a proper way for groups of people to behave when they were deliberating together. This often went under the name of something like parliamentary law." — Nicholas Cole
• (28:34) "Most revolutions do not look like the American Revolution in this sense. Other alternatives are definitely available." — Nicholas Cole
• (38:58) "The Quill Project is an attempt to help people understand these sometimes very extended and complicated processes of deliberation. You can think of it as kind of track changes for historians." — Nicholas Cole

Transcript

Intro
 [0:00 - 0:05]:
 We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution.

Matthew Brogdon
 [0:05 - 0:23]:
 Welcome to This Constitution. I'm Matthew Brogdon, and today I'm excited to welcome a friend and colleague from Pembroke College, Oxford, Nicholas Cole. He's the creator and director of the Quill Project and a long time collaborator with the centre for Constitutional Studies. Nicholas, welcome to this Constitution.

Nicholas Cole
 [0:23 - 0:25]:
 It's really a thrill to be here. Thank you, Matthew.

Matthew Brogdon
 [0:25 - 0:52]:
 You've studied deliberation. The Quill project is all about how Americans and others around the world deliberate on texts. Things like the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, which we're working on right now. Where did this whole tradition come from? Of Americans sitting down in groups to come up with our founding documents? And is that normal? Is that the way people have typically created foundational laws and things of this kind.

Nicholas Cole
 [0:52 - 1:08]:
 In the history of the world before the American Revolution. Most constitutions were the product either of, as the Americans would say, accident and force, the Federalist Papers or the wisdom of a lawgiver. So you can think of ancient Athens asking Solon to write them a constitution and fix some of their problems.

[1:08 - 2:07]:
 Or Lycurgus in Sparta, or, you know, other law givers of that type, or even in the Bible, you know, sort of law givers exist and, and give codes of conduct for people. And America is different. And that really struck me when I first started studying American history, America's founding texts, and then its constitutional law. These things are written by groups of people who deliberate and worry about every word, and come to some consensus, or make compromises with each other. That's really special. We take it for granted now, but that is something special that came out of the American Revolution and became a normal way for government to be made, but in 1776, 1787, this was quite an unusual thing.

Matthew Brogdon
 [2:07 - 2:34]:
 So it's not the way we often think of something like the Declaration of Independence. We're approaching its 250th anniversary next year, and instinctively, Americans associated with Thomas Jefferson, for example. I mean, Jefferson, even famously on his tombstone, wrote his own epitaph that he was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the founder of the University of Virginia.

[2:34 - 2:53]:
 These were his accomplishments he wanted to record, and many Americans do remember him as the author of the declaration. But you say 1776 produced produced the declaration through something else that Jefferson's not sold on sitting down to write a founding document, but that there's some other kind of process going on.

Nicholas Cole
 [2:53 - 3:47]:
 Well, all of those things that Jefferson takes credit for are things that he did in concert with other people. So unlike some monarch founding a university, Jefferson was, yes, a principal agent in agitating for and helping to draft the documents that created the University of Virginia. But he didn't do it alone. And likewise, yes, he had a huge input into the text of the Declaration of Independence, but he wrote it at the behest of the Continental Congress. He was a member of he was appointed to a drafting committee of five people. He collaborated with that committee to produce a text. That text was then submitted back to Congress, and Congress went through it and decided what language it liked and what changes it wanted to make.

[3:47 - 4:57]:
 And some of those changes. Jefferson really didn't agree with at all. Even if you know a lot of the language he he could take credit for. And then, of course, he wasn't starting with a completely blank page because the language of the Declaration of Independence needed to incorporate within itself some of the resolutions that Congress had already passed concerning independence, and particularly the the critical legal language that said that America was now and of right, ought to be independent of Great Britain. That language had already been drafted by somebody else in Congress. So. So all of these things that Jefferson takes principle credit for were things that he did in concert with other people, and that that is one of the spirits of the revolution, if I can put it like that. The idea that human beings do their best work when they act together, that feature of American thought in the 18th century, that was one of the things that really captured my interest when I was, as a much younger person, thinking about or maybe becoming a historian was the thing I wanted to do.

Matthew Brogdon
 [4:57 - 5:43]:
 Yeah. So the spirit of the American Revolution is not just sort of taking up arms and waging the war, but you describe it as a rational process, as people getting together and working together to make decisions. Produce these sorts of texts. What are some other examples of that? Because, I mean, we're on the the Declaration of Independence is produced by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. It's the second. There had to be a first. So we had the first Continental Congress back there doing some work. And then you've mentioned local assemblies and some things of that kind. So maybe what are some key precursors to the founders efforts to produce a declaration of independence? What what what puts us in the place where we can have that kind of deliberative process?

Nicholas Cole
 [5:43 - 6:08]:
 Well, all of the colonies had deliberative assemblies. Many places also had a more local tradition of regular assemblies, so in Massachusetts one might think of town meetings, and those town meetings considered resolutions that that they would pass. These these would seem to us to be quite formal things.

[6:08 - 7:26]:
 Now, I think when people think of a town hall, they think of somebody with a microphone answering questions. But this this is not the kind of town meeting that we're thinking about. With a town meeting in Massachusetts for decades and decades before the American Revolution was part of the system of government. People would meet, they would pass resolutions. There was a project in the 20th century to to publish all the records of these town meetings, so you can go back and you can look at the long history of local Deliberation in in relatively formal ways. So not just a system of meetings where some figure comes in to answer questions, but a system where groups of people get together, they can consider language. They can, as a group, amend that language. They can decide that they want to adopt it or not. That tradition in different ways, was diffused throughout the colonies, so that down in Virginia, it wasn't enough for somebody like, well, any of the American revolutionary leaders to simply write their sense of what the quarrel with Britain was.

[7:26 - 8:56]:
 So the Fairfax Resolves, for example, which. Yeah, okay. Principally written perhaps by one person who drafts the text, but published as a result of a meeting where a group of people get together not only to put their name to the text, not only to vote it up or down, but to debate changes to it. So, to answer your question, there's a series of formal systems that exist as part of colonial government. There are traditions of meetings that are, you know, less formal in the sense of not being part of the system of government, but just part of how people conduct their ordinary, everyday business. And then, of course, as the constitutional conflict with Britain starts to develop, there are groups of people who start to call together, not quite legal meetings to co-ordinate activity against the British government and to coordinate resistance. And of course, the Continental Congresses are the national version, if I can put it like that. Of of this definitely not endorsed by the the British. But building on more local assemblies, you can almost think of a kind of federated, informal structure of meetings where the Continental Congress is at the top, and then there might be some state level bodies, and delegates might go to those based on election at local meetings.

[8:56 - 9:20]:
 And meanwhile, the colonial assemblies are slowly coming to terms with the idea that they might need to turn into constitutional conventions for the states or legislative governments for the state that are no longer going to be these subordinate bodies, but are going to be the actual governments of America.

Matthew Brogdon
 [9:20 - 9:55]:
 Now, this is really interesting. The idea that Americans just sort of ad hoc think our colonial legislature, which was operating under the authority of either a charter or some other authorization from Parliament or from the Crown. It's just going to take on itself these new responsibilities. But before we talk about those things, actually, I'd be interested in going a little more granular about some of this. You mentioned the Fairfax Resolves, which if I understand right, this is 1774. We have developing conflict with Great Britain. We're still a still a ways away from Lexington and Concord and shots being fired. But there are some pretty significant degree of conflict, political conflict and a threat of some armed conflict. And Fairfax is, of course, this is the area where George Washington lives, right? This is sort of George Washington's local assembly in Virginia, more or less.

Nicholas Cole
 [10:17 - 11:37]:
 Yeah, absolutely. This is in some ways, George Washington is one of the people agitating for a statement of principles to be written. If you see this kind of thing printed today, it will often be bound together in a volume with a set of pamphlets, you know, single author pamphlets It's sometimes published under somebody's name or under a pseudonym, and you'll see a document like this. Printed alongside those and capturing some of the same constitutional thought, beginning to explain why Britain's government in America is illegitimate or at least behaving very badly. But I think we should think of these documents as something slightly different to pamphlets. When a group of people get together and they go through a text together and it's then printed with their with their names, it says at the bottom, signed long list of names at the end that has no authority to it, that even a very widely read pamphlet like Tom Paine's Common Sense, read by lots of people in the months before the American Revolution, just doesn't have because a pamphlet written by a single individual.

Nicholas Cole
 [11:37 - 11:57]:
 Well, that's an individual view. But in persuading their countrymen to fight for an independent United States of America. What was important was to have statements of the community's sense, you know, a corporate sense, if you like.

Matthew Brogdon
 [11:57 - 12:47]:
 In the case of the Fairfax Resolves, they're producing these, which are going to function as sort of instructions to two representatives from the area who are then going to go to a statewide of Virginia convention, which, incidentally, is the that Virginia convention is the body that two years later is going to produce a resolution that they're going to send on to the Continental Congress to say these states are and of right ought to be free and independent states. It's going to be this this, you know, this body that is assembled from local representatives into a statewide convention and then conveying its instructions onto Congress. It becomes a momentous thing. You kind of see the grassroots character of some of these things. But as you say, that's not just individuals sort of getting out in public and publishing a, you know, newspaper essay or a pamphlet.

Matthew Brogdon
 [12:47 - 12:50]:
 They're deliberative assemblies of people who are deliberately getting together.

Nicholas Cole
 [12:50 - 14:02]:
 And perhaps it's important to note that one of the things that delayed a Declaration of Independence, if you think that there is actual military conflict from the spring of 1775, and yet the Declaration of Independence is not signed until July 1776. One of the things that explains that delay is not just that people were, you know, hoping for some kind of resolution with Britain, that there needed to be time to get the sense of the community established and communicated to Congress so that when the Declaration of Independence was issued. It was issued in a way that conformed to the instructions that delegates had from bodies diffused throughout America. If a Congress had just met and just declared that America was independent, even if that was the right thing to do, even if that was the expedient thing to do. How could that have carried the weight necessary to persuade people to put their fortunes and lives on the line? That that doesn't seem possible.

Matthew Brogdon
 [14:02 - 14:22]:
 So when Congress sends copies of the Declaration of Independence back out to local assemblies, to state legislatures and so forth, they're really sending back the product that those local bodies had already demanded and expressed a desire for.

Matthew Brogdon
 [14:22 - 15:32]:
 That's very interesting observation, because we usually think of I know, I think of the Constitution as a document that's ratified, right? It's drafted by a set of framers, and then it's sent out to the public for them to vote on and ratify and adopt it. And there's not a similar process with the declaration. So we think, well, that's just the declaration of the Congress. But but whenever we look at the actual process and back of that, the sort of local deliberative processes that are going on and sending instructions to representatives, it does give it an imprimatur of popular sovereignty, of a kind of an action rooted in in the public opinion. I want to ask about a couple of other kinds of bodies, because so far we've mentioned we've mentioned the Fairfax Resolves produced by that local assembly. We've talked about the Congress, but it's quite interesting the variety of these things, we think of them as being legislatures. But some of the other bodies that I've seen that produced documents during the revolutionary struggle, these sorts of documents, you know, produced through deliberation, Signed by the different members include some bodies that we don't normally think of this way.

Matthew Brogdon
 [15:32 - 16:27]:
 So, for example, I've seen them from militia regiments who sort of sat down, drafted up what they thought were the reasons that they should be engaged in the struggle. Sort of. Everyone signs off on it. So you have some local militia regiment doing this, and the other is grand juries. Grand juries would assemble. Maybe you could help me understand that that's going to that's going to leave people somewhat perplexed. Why would a grand jury be making these sort of public political statements, don't they? You know, we think of a grand jury now as the sort of legal body that gathers, that has a very specific purpose find out a crime, indict people of crime. A lot of people even know what a grand jury is now. But those who do and have been involved, who may ever get called up for jury service, would think, well, we never sat down and drafted a political statement about things that were going on at the moment. So can you help me understand that? Why would a grand jury at the time be doing something of this kind.

Nicholas Cole
 [16:27 - 17:59]:
 Well, well, this goes really to the American reception of an idea that is really profound and yet something that we have almost, but not quite forgotten, which is this. There was an idea that there was a proper way for groups of people to behave when they were deliberating together. This often went under the name of something like parliamentary law, and was often derived from a sense of the set of rules that Parliament used for itself. But these rules were adopted by lots of other bodies as well, and a sense grew up in the 17th and 18th and was very much codified in the 19th century, especially in America, that there was a proper way for groups of individuals to debate with each other and to establish what they thought as a group, and to do it in a way that enabled them to put their name to it. And the way you signaled that you were doing this is that you would debate in a formal way. There's variation. Obviously there's variation, but the product of the meeting would be a set of resolutions that the body could put its name to.

Nicholas Cole
 [17:59 - 19:13]:
 And lots and lots of different bodies behave like this. And not all of them are legislatures or or even revolutionary committees. I mean, this this might be a very good way of running a school. If you had a board of directors to run a school, they would behave like this. There's a residue of this in the way that company meetings still happen. There will be shareholder Resolutions. now nowadays that those meetings often take up. Up or down votes and don't really debate in this way, but older generations really thought of these things too, as deliberative bodies in the way that Parliament was a deliberative body or the US Senate was a deliberative body. So I think it's interesting that really in the last few decades, we've lost this sense as a society that this is how groups of people of all types should behave. But it's deeply woven into the society that created the American Revolution. So the the idea of meeting together to write a constitution didn't come out of nowhere. It came out of this tradition of deliberation and resolution.

Matthew Brogdon
 [19:13 - 20:21]:
 And that's a great way to think about it. I think about, grand juries at the time, too, Two. Like so many public bodies. These were bodies that people would be appointed to by their community or come to hold office on. And a grand jury at the time of the founding was typically something you would do for for the space of a year, even in many cases. So things that we think has very temporary responsibilities that, you know, you assemble a jury to handle a thing. The character of a public body like that tended to be a longer term commitment. You'd have a local grand jury that would be appointed, and that that grand jury would meet periodically over the course of a year. And those pre-existing kinds of local public service. You were in the body of people who were selected. You had to bear this responsibility on behalf of the public for this period of time. The fact that those structures and institutions and opportunities for local self-government exist just sort of form the opportunity for people to sees who can.

Matthew Brogdon
 [20:21 - 20:55]:
 Then, having been acculturated to deliberating on things, making decisions about these sort of things, say, well, this isn't the ordinary business of a grand jury, but, you know, there's this question of of how our fellow citizens, how the colony ought to look at our relationship to Great Britain. Should the local militia regiment join the effort? Should we be preparing arms and so forth and organizing ourselves? And rather than just sort of doing that, ad hoc Americans think instinctively, well, we're going to deliberate on this and these, these public bodies and assemblies we have.

Nicholas Cole
 [20:55 - 21:50]:
 Well, I think there are two points that come out of that. I mean, firstly, if if some individuals hold a particular role to represent in important ways the community, such as a grand jury, it's natural that that body might think of itself in a time of crisis as having a particular and peculiar role to express the voice of that community. If there aren't other institutions, and if a militia is broadly, literally, you know, representative of the community in the sense many people serving in the militia, it's natural to, isn't it, that that body, organized and structured, might think of itself as being able to speak for the community as well.

Nicholas Cole
 [21:50 - 23:16]:
 So there are these institutions that I think can think of themselves as representing their community in some way. I think the other thing to say, and of course, it's part of this tradition of deliberation, is, well, okay, if you're going to claim you speak for the community, well, there's got to be a certain amount of structure around that. Were you meeting at a proper place? Did you conduct your business in a proper way? Did you make sure when you decided that this was the view you were expressing? Had you reached that language that you were going to put forward as the the voice of the community? Had you reached that decision in a proper way? What distinguishes a grand jury meeting as a grand jury from the same people meeting in a tavern and having a drink together? There has to be something that distinguishes the one thing from the other. And I think that's that's where some of the slightly formal ritual becomes important, not only for reaching compromise sometimes, or reaching forms of language that that are that are good and worthy, but but also for reassuring everybody that they're they're actually conducting their business properly.

Matthew Brogdon
 [23:16 - 24:23]:
 Also the difference between a grand jury and a mob. You know, I mean, it could just be that you talk about the same group of citizens gathered at the tavern having a drink together, but it's a very good point and a really critical point that, you know, a similar assembly, even the same assembly of individuals gathered in the street and, sort of pointing out individual citizens or calling people out into public to accuse them of wrongdoing or to set them up as enemies of the public or what have you is a mob. And it differs importantly from someone who's functioning in a public party. And one of the things that distinguishes it. Do you have rules and procedures, something that indicates to us all that you're wearing your official hat right now, and you're not just an assembly of angry citizens, you're occupying some office and you're doing the public business. And and we can kind of predict how you do that business because you've got rules you follow and you've announced to, you know, the relevant people that we're meeting now in this body, and we're doing things this way.

Matthew Brogdon
 [24:23]:
 And without all those sort of trappings which can seem might seem a little, I almost started to say pompous, but, you know, can seem almost a formal are what make up a body meeting with public authority as opposed to just a crowd.

Nicholas Cole
 [24:41 - 26:00]:
 One of the things that was really important was something called the non importation agreement. So this was an effort to boycott British trade in ways that were designed to put pressure on British authorities to give way to colonial demands. And this wasn't entirely voluntary. There were committees established to put quite a lot of pressure sometimes Literally forceful pressure on people to comply with the non importation agreement. So it was important that those committees were asked to do their work by some state meeting. Now of course this is all in the context of what the British regarded as illegal resistance to lawful authority, illegal and mischievous interference with lawful business. So, you know, if you're going to resist the label of just being a dangerous mob blocking people from going about their ordinary, lawful business, you do want some reassurance for yourself, for the community that you're claiming to act on behalf of.

Nicholas Cole
 [26:00 - 26:04]:
 You do want some reassurance that you are doing things properly.

Matthew Brogdon
 [26:04 - 27:20]:
 The, the compulsory aspect of the non importation agreement you talked about, It's not the only kind of compulsory rule that's produced by these kinds of bodies. If I'm not mistaken, the similarly, in Fairfax County, I remember reading in a biography of Washington recently that Washington had the onerous task for a while of collecting from his neighbors their sort of required contribution to the support of the militia. I think he and George Mason lived in the same sort of neighbors, and Washington kind of complained of having to be the bad guy because without royal authority and certainly raising a militia to potentially resist British authority, you can't very well claim the authority of the Crown doing this. And so these local assemblies, at least in some cases, claimed the power more or less to tax their neighbors to say, we've decided we're going to have a militia, we're going to field the militia and train it and do these other things. It needs to be supported. And then telling this, this body, telling the the folks in the vicinity that, you now owe a certain amount of money to the support of this.

Matthew Brogdon
 [27:20 - 27:49]:
 And, you know, your neighbor, George Washington, shows up at your door and says, I wanted to remind you that, you know, your contributions do for this sort of thing. I mean, that's pretty remarkable thing, too, in terms it reminds us that, you know, this revolutionary self-government is actually not just a sort of series of proclamations. It's not just about words. In many cases, to carry through on this, these these local deliberative assemblies have to do more than talk.

Nicholas Cole
 [27:49 - 28:34]:
 Well, and it could have looked very different. So, you know, there are revolutionary movements around the world today that do need funding in just the same way that the American Revolution needed funding. But don't bother with the niceties. Don't have the civil structures to build on that America had, and simply tell people that they're going to have to pay protection money and enforce that through violence. You know, most revolutions do not look like the American Revolution in this sense. Other alternatives are definitely available. And again, this is one of the things that really, I think is one of the most fascinating things about the American Revolution.

Nicholas Cole
 [28:34 - 29:01]:
 It is done insofar as a thing like this can possibly be done within the structures of rational and representative government, where other revolutions are not, and impose their will and extract the money they need through force based on, you know, as it were, the true believers managing to coerce those around them.

Matthew Brogdon
 [29:01 - 29:51]:
 So how distinctively American is this, this propensity around the time of the founding to, to gather, to engage in this deliberative work, sort of spontaneous public bodies at the local level, doing this kind of work. There are a lot of things we inherit, you know, from the British common law, from even deeper roots in Western law and Western political tradition. To what degree was this kind of deliberative work or this kind of I'm struggling to put a label on it. You know, this capacity and tendency of the community to work together in this way. To what extent is that? Is that distinctive? Is there a corollary to it? Is that is it tied in to or English background or other European traditions?

Nicholas Cole
 [29:51 - 29:53]:
 I think it's distinctive in two ways.

Nicholas Cole
 [29:53 - 31:32]:
 I think it is partly a distinctively British tradition. Some of the principles of the law of Parliament, the next parliamentarian, you know, had had literally evolved in Parliament and were copied in other places. Parliament always likes to describe itself as the mother of parliaments for this reason, with some but not overwhelming justification, I think. But but I think there is something to the idea that that the the British traditions of government, had started to emphasize deliberation in this sense earlier, more than an up or down vote, but the ability of groups of people meaningfully to author text. But I think it's also distinctive within the British Empire in America. I think this is especially embraced in America, partly because of traditions of town government and local government in America, and partly and definitely related to that, even religious ideas and the idea of Meetings to organize religion in America that that emphasized this kind of, Assembly of people to help run the church rather than instructions received down from bishops to local communities. A few years ago, I looked at the work of French Revolutionary Assemblies, and it's not something I've done as much work on as the work I've done in America, but it is interesting to compare that.

Nicholas Cole
 [31:32 - 32:47]:
 You can see that French revolutionaries are just much less used to using this kind of committee structure. And, you know, without going into too much detail, sometimes behave in ways that's fairly naive. I'll just take take one example. The French revolutionaries also want to write a declaration of rights, so they appoint committees to do this. But whereas in America. It was obvious to everybody that what you did was you appointed a small drafting committee, and then you reviewed their work in a larger body. What the French Revolutionary Assembly does is it appoints five committees simultaneously to produce some texts. And then, of course, they have to reconcile the work of five completely separate bodies of of people. And that's much, much harder. And it just shows in a way, they're just not as used to this kind of deliberative structure and all of the things that go with it, with it. Whereas in America, operating at various levels, people are just very used to how a body of people deliberates and how smaller committees can be used to facilitate that.

Nicholas Cole
 [32:47 - 33:05]:
 And yes, that might mean sometimes asking Thomas Jefferson to have a go at a first draft and taking that draft back to a drafting committee, having the committee look over it, having that committee pass it back to Congress, and having Congress go through the text and decide what it is that everybody is actually going to sign up to.

Matthew Brogdon
 [33:05 - 33:??]:
 I'm curious some of the prominent examples. Not revolutionary, but certainly maybe constitutional texts in British history, like the English Bill of rights in 1689. things like Magna Carta. Much, much earlier. There's a great deal of what we might call revolutionary activity around the English Civil War. When the Puritans managed to gain control of Parliament, established Commonwealth. They had the king. I mean, that seems pretty revolutionary. Was there anything like this at work in those those earlier English? Because we often do draw the connection. I mean, if you pick up the typical American history textbook and so forth about our founding, you know, you'll see some lines drawn between our foundational texts like this and things, you know, obvious legal forebears like Magna Carta and the Bill of rights and other such things.

Matthew Brogdon
 [33:59 - 34:02]:
 So are there similar processes at work?

Nicholas Cole
 [34:02 - 35:24]:
 Well, some of these traditions are very, very ancient and predate even all of that. So there are tantalizing hints in classical sources that, at least in some places, popular assemblies that were very, very large indeed could amend text, not just vote yes or no. We often think of them as just voting yes or no. But there are some hints that at least some of them had the ability to amend text. We don't know very much about how that process was run. We know the Roman Senate could amend decrees during its meetings. Again, we don't know an awful lot about that process. Magna Carta, clearly, there was a meeting to encourage very strongly the king to sign a text. We don't know very much about the exact detail of how that is put together, but there must have been a process of some kind. What becomes distinctive in England is you start to get the the records of Parliament, and these are still beautifully preserved. You start to get the records in Parliament of resolutions being passed to amend pieces of legislation, to amend resolution.

Nicholas Cole
 [35:24 - 36:49]:
 So we start to to preserve the workings of those deliberations and develop the rules around how those processes should work in quite a lot of detail. And you're right. During the English Civil War, again, armies can function sometimes as quasi deliberative bodies and can have this this dual function a little bit like the militia in the American Revolution. And of course, the big the big controversy there was should Parliament meet? Or were we happy with absolute government? Should Parliament meet regularly? Was that part of the constitution, or did Parliament only need to meet when the King called parliament? This is one of the the big controversies of the the English Civil War. And then, of course, the Bill of rights. Well, that's written by Parliament during the Glorious Revolution. So this is an older tradition. I do think it it really starts to crystallize in the, in the modern form that we know in, in England. But I think it is embraced in America to a degree that that is distinctive. And by the 18th century, the late 18th century, it's much more present in many more places in America than perhaps even in England itself.

Matthew Brogdon
 [36:49 - 38:07]:
 So we can see a lot of streams coming together in the 1770s with assemblies like the Second Continental Congress and the writing of the Declaration of Independence. This habit of gathering and deliberating as citizens on a text that you're all going to adhere to and represents your common views, the views of the community is something that points to our federal system. It sort of enables and models our system of federal union, where we rely on local self-government and our system of deliberation and popular constitution, making the idea that we the people, can make a constitution through representatives rather than just asking, as you pointed out, a great statesman or philosopher, a Solon or a Lycurgus, to make a constitution and give it to us as a sort of gift. Right. We don't have to delegate away this authority. Instead, we delegate it to our representatives who then bring it back to us. So it's such an important element of the American tradition of self-government. Appreciate you helping us understand where some of that comes from and and what of what significance it is.

Matthew Brogdon
 [38:07 - 38:20]:
 As we're wrapping up, tell us briefly about the Quill project, what kind of work it's doing and what projects should folks be looking for coming out on the Quill project?

Nicholas Cole
 [38:20 - 39:19]:
 The Quill project, which you can find at Quill Project Dot net, is a collaboration between Pembroke College, Oxford and and many other places, but nowhere more so than Utah Valley University. It's our strategic partner on on this project, and we've been colleagues for a very long time. This project is an attempt to help people understand these sometimes very extended and complicated processes of deliberation. And think of it as kind of track changes for historians and people interested in history. How did these documents come to be put together? Why are some words in it and some words not in a final text? So if you go to the site now, you'll see we've got work on the 1787 Constitution. That takes three, three months to write. And that was that was our flagship project. We can show you how the Bill of rights is put together.

Nicholas Cole
 [39:19 - 40:39]:
 But of course, the Declaration of Independence is 250 years old. Well, in the coming year. And so you can't resist thinking. All right, Thomas Jefferson, let's let's just have a look. So we we have started to pull together the various resolutions in Congress, the various other documents from around the country that Jefferson was able to draw on as he wrote his first draft for the Declaration of Independence. And that's not to do down his roll, but actually to celebrate his role as somebody who is doing what he. He actually claimed to do at the end of his life, which is to produce a document that reflected the. The will of the American people, the spirit of the American people. And actually, just to put a little more detail onto that and to show you, yes, these are the words that are Jefferson's own or this is the particular formulation that we can say, this is. This is Jefferson's and these are words that he chose to take from other places. So we're very excited about that project, and I hope it'll be an interesting way to to celebrate the declaration.

Nicholas Cole
 [40:39 - 40:52]:
 Yes, it's the work of Thomas Jefferson, but also as the work Of this American tradition of deliberation and rational debate and popular sovereignty.

Matthew Brogdon
 [40:52 - 41:30]:
 Such a tremendous resource, and our listeners can also find resource collections related to the Declaration of Independence. So not just the deliberations of the Continental Congress, but also many of these local bodies we were talking about. If you're looking for a place to find those documents. I think we can say Quill has assembled a collection of documents related to the making of the Declaration of Independence and our deliberation about it as a people, not just in Philadelphia, but throughout the, the fledgling union at the time. You can find all of those resources there. Quill project. Net. Look for the resource collections on the declaration.

Nicholas Cole
 [41:30 - 41:48]:
 And I want to pay tribute in all of that to the editorial team at Oxford, and also to the students at Utah Valley University, because these resources don't magically appear online. And there's been a been a huge effort by a lot of people to pull them together.

Matthew Brogdon
 [41:48 - 41:54]:
 There have. Well, thank you for joining us, Nicholas. I appreciate conversation and look forward to talking again soon.

Nicholas Cole
 [41:54 - 41:54]:
 Thank you Matthew.

Outro
 [41:54 - End]:
 The Constitution is more than parchment under glass at the National Archives. It's a blueprint for American self-government that shapes every part of our civic life, from the rights we cherish to the laws we live under. We explore the ongoing battle over the meaning and relevance of America's founding document. This Constitution will equip you to engage the most pressing political questions of our time. Join us every two weeks as we hash out constitutional questions together. This podcast is ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah's Civic Thought & Leadership Initiative.