Welcome

This site is meant to be a primary source of information about the: text, history, and meaning of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Lawyers, journalists, and members of the public are welcome to start here when beginning research about the Pennsylvania Constitution, Pennsylvania constitutional law cases pending in various courts, and current public policy debates concerning the State Constitution.

There are relatively few Web sites dedicated solely to an analysis and presentation of a particular State’s constitutional law and court decisions. All too often, state constitutions are overlooked and their true importance to the administration of state law under-appreciated. At the time of the creation of this site, there were virtually no current and accurate copies of the Pennsylvania Constitution available on the Internet. Amendments and court decisions that had altered the state constitution in some way were not always reflected in “current” written or on-line sites, even those that were produced by the Pennsylvania State government.  As Pennsylvania voters occasionally amend the State constitution, and as court decisions clarify, modify, or even strike down provisions and amendments of that constitution, we will try our best to keep current with those changes and post them here.  This site also contains reports of State and federal court decisions impacting the Pennsylvania Constitution, citations of law review articles, news items relating to the Pennsylvania Constitution and commentary and analysis about court decisions that affect interpretation and application of the State constitution.

 

Acknowledgements

The Co-Directors wish to thank the following organizations and people for their contributions to this project. The Pennsylvania Bar Trust Fund gave $3,000 towards the digitization of the 1967-1968 Constitutional Convention materials. With the assistance of Senator Jay Costa, Jr., the Duquesne Law School received a Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development grant of $15,000 to digitize the remaining constitutional convention materials, secondary sources, and have the web site redesigned. Multimedia Unlimited Inc. provided the digitization services and the web site design. We wish to thank Vicki Bromberger, Vice President of Multimedia Unlimited, and her staff for her excellent work, Professor Frank Liu, Director of the Center for Legal Information, whose staff plays a large role in providing resources and assistance for the web site, former Dean Nicholas Cafardi under whose leadership this site was established.

Co-Directors

Joel Fishman, Ph.D., M.L.S., Associate Director for Lawyer Services, Emeritus

Bruce Ledewitz, Professor of Law and Adrian Van Kaam C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Scholarly Excellence

Site Content

To promote scholarly and legal research, the site contains:
– Copies of earlier versions of the Pennsylvania Constitution with all amendments
– Constitutional Convention debates
– Attorney General Opinions
– Treatises
– Digests
– Periodical Summaries
– Table of cases linked to the full-text opinion

This project continues to be a work in progress as we continue to add materials to the various categories of documents.

Disclaimer

Please note that Duquesne University assumes no liability for the accuracy of any information that is found at this web site, and cannot be held responsible for any problems that may occur from its use.  Furthermore, information found at this site may change or disappear without warning. Copy or download anything that you deem really important.