Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

1874

Pennsylvania has had five constitutions, with the current framework dating to 1874 and substantially revised by a constitutional convention in 1967-68. The 1874 document was itself a reform charter, adopted in response to widespread corruption and legislative overreach during the post-Civil War years, and it imposed new limits on the General Assembly's ability to pass special legislation favoring particular interests. The 1968 revisions modernized the judiciary and executive branches, reorganized state courts, and strengthened the bill of rights. Pennsylvania's Declaration of Rights, which opens the constitution, traces its lineage directly to the radical Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, one of the most democratic governing documents of the Revolutionary era.