Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 - Innovations of The 1776 Constitution

Innovations of The 1776 Constitution

The 1776 Constitution contained seven of the six points of the United Kingdom's People's Charter, over 50 years before that document was written. Some of the radical innovations included:

• Voting franchise for all men, without property qualifications.
• A unicameral legislature, with members elected to a one terms.
• A twelve-member Supreme Executive Council to administer the government.
• A judiciary appointed by the legislature for seven-year terms, and removable at any time.
• The provision that all approved legislation wait to be enacted until the next session of the Assembly, so that the people of the state could assess the utility of the proposed law.
• A President elected by the Assembly and Council together. Thomas Wharton Jr. was chosen in 1777 to be the first President of the Supreme Executive Council.
• A Council of Censors (elected every seven years) to conduct an evaluation of the activities. They could "censure" actions by the government deemed to have violated the constitution. The Council of Censors was the only body with the authority to call a convention to amend the constitution.

The Constitution also made Pennsylvania's official title the "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" (as it remains today). The term "commonwealth" is used by only four states - Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky. The revolutionaries in Vermont directly copied many of the provisions of the Pennsylvania constitution. This happened because Dr. Thomas Young, a participant in the writing of the Pennsylvania constitution and mentor for Ethan Allen, wrote a letter to the Vermont constitutional convention suggesting both that Vermont be the new republic's name and that Vermont model its constitution on the new, radically democratic Pennsylvania one.