Commentary Collections

Throughout the platform round icons are events relating to individuals and their right to have an opinion in particular debates:

Person joining a committee

Person leaving a committee

Person elected to a position

Roll-call

Parchment-coloured, square icons relate to the creation and amending of documents:

Create a new proposal

Create a new document that is a line-by-line revision of another document (noted by the pen icon in the corner)

Document amendment proposed

Document taken from another committee (note arrow in corner)

Amendment taken from another committee

Debate a proposal

Documents that have an explicit subtype can be displayed with a slightly different icon:

Legislative text

Formal Resolutions

A message to be sent elsewhere

A petition to be considered

Rules and Orders of Business

Diamond-shaped, purple icons relate to decisions taken:

Drop a proposal

Refer a proposal to another committee

Adopt a proposal

Other vote (continue debate)

Reject a proposal

Postpone a debate

Blue, hexagon-shaped icons relate to 'procedural' proposals that do not directly alter text but affect how a committee does its work (and are usually used only for transient things, such as a point of order.)

Procedural motion

Procedural motion with sub-decisions

Debate on a procedural motion

Commentary Collections

Research Assistants' Commentary (1787 Constitutional Convention)

Issues highlighted by the 2016 editorial team.

Introduction to the Constitutional Convention

Quill 2016 Edition

Advising the President

Lindsay Chervinsky

Lindsay Chervinsky on the President's Cabinet

The Creation of the Electoral College

N. P. Cole, Grace Mallon and Kat Howarth

A collection highlighting important moments in the debate over how a President should be chosen for the United States.

Impeachment and the Convention

Kat Howarth

The Convention debates whether officials should be removable by impeachment, and if so how.

Documentary History of the Constitutional Convention

N. P. Cole & G. Mallon

Knowledge of the Constitutional Convention during the nineteenth century was partial and contingent on the publication of various accounts and journals, not all of them accurate or honest.

Bill of Rights 2018 Editors' Commentary

Editorial commentaries on the creation of the U.S. Bill of Rights 1789

Bilder and Doubts Over Madison's Notes

Kieran Hazzard

A brief exploration of Mary Sarah Bilder's charges that Madison's Notes do not tell the whole truth of the Constitutional Convention.

This is a development site

Commentary Collections

Commentary Collections