For the More Perfect Satisfaction of the Public

Abstract Between May and September 1776, Pennsylvanian revolutionaries constituted a new form of government that significantly empowered the people outside formal institutions to scrutinise state decision making. And in so doing, the Pennsylvanian rebels created a radical alternative within the state constitutional tradition that continues to influence the exercise of state power in the United States today. The article approaches constitutions as an instituted process, arguing that constitutions are best understood in the context of the institutions that created them. The article traces Pennsylvania’s first constitution from its origin in the revolutionary committee system through to the Constitutional Convention. The article concludes with analysis of three radical principles in constitutional design: the moral imperative to scrutinise state decision making, the obligation for elected representatives to explain state decision making to the people out-of-doors, and the creation of the Council of Censors, a popularly elected body with the exclusive power to amend the constitution.