Talk:Constitution of the United States of America

COTUS A and I Project
An effort to upload .djvu's of all 15 Parts (over 40 sections in total} of the Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation - 1992 Edition and subsequent revisions  to the sub-page annotations added to the 15 part base version since its original publication in 1992. Produced by the U.S. Federal Government and Published by U.S. Government Printing Office (HAS THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS and NOW ALL PDFs ELECTRONICALLY CERTIFIED BY GPO).

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis, and Interpretation - 1992 Edition

Name
Does anybody know who it was that first decided to settle on the name "Constitution" for this famous document, and how and why they did this? —unsigned comment by 68.40.187.76 (talk).


 * Although the United States Constitution is the oldest national constitution in continuous use. There were older ones. The state constitution of Massachusetts is ten years older.  The ultimate decision to name the document a "constitution" would have been a collective decision of the drafters, perhaps with a little urging from the Massachusetts delegates, but I can't say that for sure.  Of course "constitution" still operates as a generic term for any document that establishes (or constitutes) the structure of an organization.  It strikes me as an obvios choice. Eclecticology 03:31, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * By 1787 ten of the thirteen states had "constitutions" of their own. The phrase "the British constitution" was apparently in use before that (e.g., Montesquieu), which may be where the Americans picked it up, but that's speculation. 68.230.177.98 12:58, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

The writers, the Founding Fathers, decided on the name. It is from the Preamble of the Constitution for the United States. "do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It's not so much a name as it is a description of what the document is. Whereas the Preamble tells us the reasons for creating the document, the definition of the word constitution is the documentation in which a system of fundamental laws and principles describing the nature, function and limits of a government are recorded. —unsigned comment by TrvlSEA (talk).

Typo?
Does anyone know if the use of it's as the possesive of it was considered grammatical when the Constitution was written, or was it an error? —unsigned comment by Xyzzyva (talk).


 * From what I've read the current usage of it's is the exact opposite of what it was about 100 years ago, so yes it would've been considered grammatically correct at the American constitution's writing. — 60.227.16.7 13:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It's very easy to use the search function to see that the spelling "its" is used 7 times and in exactly the same way as today. It's just as easy to search for "it's" to see it's used only once and is clearly a misspelling since it's used in the same sense. And it's a misspelling in handwritten text, so it's not called a typo. --Espoo (talk) 20:19, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a [sic] after the it's so people know that's the actual text? —unsigned comment by 69.164.81.214 (talk).


 * Yes, definitely. --Espoo (talk) 20:19, 13 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Or even better, a comment/reference discussing the issue. I was surprised to read it, at least. Gwern (contribs) 15:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * For example something like this or at least a link to something like it. --Espoo (talk) 20:19, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Article 1 Section 9 Clause 4: Should be Census or Enumeration. Not of. please fix this. —unsigned comment by 64.37.19.178 (talk).
 * Fixed. --Spangineer (háblame) 17:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Date format
Should the dates when the amendments were ratified be in a more unambiguous format such as the ISO date format YYYY-MM-DD? —unsigned comment by 68.64.9.10 (talk).


 * I was just about to change the dates to the Wiki standard, but this article can't be edited. It doesn't have a "protected" template, so what's going on? Is this a wiki or not? PhilHibbs 13:19, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Removed Congressional preamble of the Bill of Rights as it is not actually a part of the constitution. —unsigned comment by 161.253.28.117 (talk).

The document is American so American ortography should be used. The date format is not bad, it is as it should be in American English. - TopAce —unsigned comment by 81.182.81.204 (talk).

Protection
This work seems like a prime candidate for protection, in view of the recent vandal attacks here. Does anyone have a published copy they can check it against a published source to verify its accuracy (I don't) so it can be noted on the infobox template here & a protection request submitted. AllanHainey 11:44, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Title
Does anyone think that "United States Constitution" is a better title for this page? —unsigned comment by 24.87.43.26 (talk).


 * No. That's not the document's title. It is the Constitution of the United States of America; that's its formal name. "United States Constitution" is just a contraction of the formal name for general use. —unsigned comment by 71.29.113.117 (talk).

I think the correct title is "Constitution for the United States of America". I think it's important to keep "for" instead of "of" for a subtle, but important, reason as well as for historical accuracy. Constitution "of" implies the authority of the document is granted by the United States of America and to someone who does not read history or the document, they might assume the government wrote it. However, the authority is granted by the People and the States when they created and accepted this document "for" the United States of America as a guide to how the government should be organized and run, like a procedures manual. The writers used "for" in the Preamble to the Constitution. —unsigned comment by TrvlSEA (talk).


 * It's [the] Constitution of the United States [of America] -- see Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 1.djvu/132 George Orwell III (talk) 02:20, 16 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Agreed with Orwell III, absolutely. "Constitution for the United States of America" in the Preamble is not a title--that's misreading the sentence. "Constitution" is capitalized, but that's just standard 18th-century English practice of capitalizing many substantives. The sense of the sentence is "We the people ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for [the benefit of|the use of] the United States of America", where the direct object of "ordain and establish" is only "Constitution" and "for the benefit of the United States of America" is an adverbial phrase. Note also that in Article II, Section 1, the presidential oath includes the wording "... preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" where "the Constitution of the United States" does function as a title referring to the document. Dsewell (talk) 17:58, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with your analysis. You said exactly what I want to say. "Of" was changed to "for" at 17:30, 25 July 2014, and I just changed it back to "of". --Neo-Jay (talk) 16:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Internal Anchors
I have added a few anchors into some of the clauses of Article II, Section 1 so that I can link directly to each clause for some of the wikilinks I am writing into Bush v. Gore/Opinion of the Court. They are currently written as , where # is the appropriate clause number (for example, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 is written as   , right before the first word of the clause). It would be highly appreciated if these were left in place so all of the links don't break all of a sudden! Thanks! –Pakman044 02:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Format of Signatories Names
How come some names aren't written out? For example George Washington's name is written "Go Washington". In other cases, the first name William is written simply "Wm". Is this done intentially or accidently? —unsigned comment by 24.125.118.26 (talk).

- The text on this page seems to be an attempt to reflect the text of the original, hand-written document as much as possible. The signers signed their own names in the ways that they were accustomed to do, and an examination of the images linked on the page will demonstrate that some of them abbreviated their names and some of them didn't. —unsigned comment by 129.74.109.63 (talk).

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. Article 1, third section

What is that supposed to mean? "shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of the State for which he shall be chosen" - he should not have citizenship? He must be a citizen of the state? Can somebody explain that? Is it just a typing error or what? —unsigned comment by 84.185.255.24 (talk).

I think it means that if he "shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of the State for which he shall be chosen", then he WON'T be able to be elected. —unsigned comment by 75.18.216.28 (talk).


 * Notice that it begins with a negative, so I think what it comes out to is that "noone shall be elected a Senator unless they're 30 years old, have been a citizen for 9 years, and reside in the state they're elected in." Basic residency requirement. 68.39.174.238 18:40, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Author
Should, the author be stated as The Federal Convention of 1787 and not as Government of the United States of America? The Constitution created the "Government of the United States of America"-- as we know it.--Lookatthis 15:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. Also, while I don't question the status of the work as public domain on other grounds, I think the copyright notice is a bit strange in claiming that this is the work of the "United State federal government" as the federation in question was created by the ratification of this document.  -- Bdentremont 15:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Feel free to change the author field. Regarding the copyright notice, a similar concern was raised at the top of Talk:United States Declaration of Independence. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 23:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

the right to keep and bear arms and the pursuit of happiness
Where is all that stuff about the right to keep and bear arms and the pursuit of happiness? I thought it might be around here. Thanks. --Emesee 19:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * See United States Bill of Rights and United States Declaration of Independence. --Pmsyyz 22:10, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Almost immediately after the signing of the Constitution, The 1-10 amendments were added which included the right to bear arms, since these are just as much part of the Constitution as the original text, the ought to be included. —unsigned comment by StevenDP (talk).

Preamble
Could we possibly get the Preamble into audio form as well? It seems odd that all of the other sections have audio form, but not the Preamble. I would do it, but I don't have a microphone.76.95.124.146 00:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The preamble is in the article 1 audio version. We might want to add it before to make it clearer though...82.243.59.107 00:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hey, I'm doing a scrpbook for a grade in history. I have to have some american symbols. i am useing the constiution as one of them. thanks to the discussion page I found just what I needed,thanks. Do you realy think that there is a typo in the constitution? —unsigned comment by 209.214.64.49 (talk).

What's with the capitalization?
I'm referring to stuff like "No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports" that's not capitalized in the original. Why are all these words capitalized? (Note that I also just fixed an obvious its/it's grammatical error in that section that has crept into many transcriptions of the constitution, and that a comment even claimed was "the actual spelling used in the Constitution".) --NE2 (talk) 08:49, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * See the original handwritten copy [], [], [[[], and []--Lookatthis (talk) 22:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, that sucks. Are we sure that this is actually an apostrophe and not just a stray mark (maybe the missing dot on the next "i")? It's certainly not a question of "modern spelling" as the comment says, since every other place correctly uses "its". It at least needs some sort of "sic". --NE2 (talk) 23:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We can utilise sic which is non-showing except in revealed text. -- billinghurst (talk) 01:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please do that for "it's" and "Pensylvania" and the first use of old-fashioned capitalization of a noun, the third word of the preamble. This is very important so that people better understand this version of the text and this website. In fact, some explanation like this would also be very important so people don't come up with and spread silly theories or conspiracy theories. What do i have to do to be able to edit this website? --Espoo (talk) 20:33, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

The Supreme Court does not use "it's" or capitalize these words: It would seem that the original printed text, not the handwritten text, is the official Constitution. --NE2 (talk) 01:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It look like "the original printed text" is "copy" printed at Providence Rhode-Island by JOHN CARTER. to be "...sent to the several Town-Clerks in the State, to be distributed among the Inhabitants, that the Freemen may have an Opportunity...."
 * In the [The Writings of James Madison] "it's" is use, "it's" is use
 * Also "it's" is [use many more books]
 * I Think the "handwritten text" would be call The Primary source any other "(re-)type copy" would be call aSecondary source--Lookatthis (talk) 03:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you doing the same search as I? I see 753 for its and 555 for it's. But what really matters is which version the Supreme Court uses, since they are responsible for interpreting the Constitution. --NE2 (talk) 03:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * See [Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 329 U.S. 69 (1946)],[CANTON R. CO. v. ROGAN, 340 U.S. 511 (1951)],[DEPT. OF REVENUE v. JAMES BEAM CO., 377 U.S. 341 (1964)][Supreme Court Cases on Political Representation, 1787-2001 By Christopher A. Anzalone, United States Supreme Court], and [Encyclopedia of Supreme Court Quotations]--Lookatthis (talk) 04:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Rather than cherry-picking examples, let's compare hits on supreme.justia.com: 28 for its vs. 4 for it's - and three of those four use both! --NE2 (talk) 04:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The Supreme Court may decide, when next updating their website, to change their personal nomenclature; does that mean we would do the same? No, we are reproducing the original hand-written copy; and what it has, is what we should have. Of course, I'm not 100% convinced that's an apostrophe in the original... Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Romain Rolland. 17:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * On the U.S. Supreme Court Web page there is link to a copy of the "handwritten text" I think we should keep the "handwritten text" However I have setup pages for both the "handwritten text"(in the page namespace)  and United States Constitution Broadsid Printed by John Carter Rhode Island Providence in the page namespace) AKA "The Print Text"  They just need to be poof I hope this helps. --Lookatthis (talk) 04:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I've been looking at some published transcriptions of the Constitution (9/22/09) and am impressed by the inconsistencies, especially in capitalization. Here are two capitalizations in the current wikipedia version that differ from the handwritten copy in the National Archives. One is Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power." (The current wiki version has "power.") Another is Article IV, Section 2: "shall on Demand of the executive Authority." (The current wiki version has "demand.") I've seen these right in a published text, and yet that had "the Power," wrongly. There are probably other discrepancies that a full proofreading would disclose, but it's obviously a hard thing to do. —unsigned comment by 75.82.227.212 (talk).


 * We(On Wikisource) go by handwritten copy in the National Archives--Lookatthis (talk) 04:00, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Now what on EARTH does this have to do with the price of tee in china? i mean really, just ask James Madison, he wrote it! —unsigned comment by StevenDP (talk).

Audio links in printable version
Is there any particular reason for the audio link buttons to show up in the printable version of this page? It's needless and distracting to have them in the printed version of the page. Horologium (talk) 08:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Recordings
I suggest we put text rather than recordings. Many folks can't figure out how to operate sound files and it makes "reading" the document take a lot longer than it should.

173.65.239.63 17:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Links to signatories?
Why aren't more of the names linked to their Wikipedia articles? Is it because some of them are abbreviated like  is only seen as Wm. Blount?

These people laid out the DNA for the United States of America, we should try to provide more recognition and help make the article more complete in this way. —unsigned comment by Kenjohnson (talk).

Wrong link for Robert Morris
A link for Robert Morris in the Signatures section goes to a disambiguation page. I believe the correct article is supposed to be Robert Morris (financier). Would someone please fix it? 66.168.69.205 17:21, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed it; thanks. —Spangineerwp (háblame) 17:40, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Amendments?
Sorry if this has been discussed before, but aren't the amendments to the constitution actually part of the constitution? So what we have here, under the title of "Constitution of the United States of America", is actually only the original Constitution of the United States of America, not the whole thing (because the whole thing includes the amendments).

So really, we should have something like "Original Constitution of the United States of America", which is what this is, and separately there should be an item called "Constitution of the United States of America", which includes both the original text and the amendments.

Right? —unsigned comment by Sonicsuns (talk).

Typo in the preamble
In the scans and everywhere else the word tranquility is spelled with one L. Currently it is spelled with two L's. This mistake is made where it says "insure domestic tranquility" 75.54.116.247 08:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Thanks for that. -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Article I, Section 8, 14th line beginning "To"
The current version reads, "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repeal Invasions;"

repeal should be changed to repel. —unsigned comment by Wireflight~enwikisource (talk).
 * ✅ Thanks. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Typo in Article II, Section I
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors. The word chusing should be written as choosing.

67.0.123.96 17:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

❌: We don't correct the authors. The Constitution spells the word "chusing", so that's what it is.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 19:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not only that we don't correct even the most obvious of typos in the original works (though we do sometimes mark them as such with SIC), the word chuse is not an error—it is a valid word, and was in common use at the time of writing. Inductiveload— talk/contribs  16:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Audio was removed
Why? had audio. Scott Illini (talk) 20:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

ToC does not seem to work
It's unclickable for me. Scott Illini (talk) 20:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Picture
Shouldn't there be a picture, I'd ad one but I'm not to good with the Wiki Script.Anyways, I'm sure There's one in the Commons —unsigned comment by StevenDP (talk).

The number of dots before Alexander Hamilton's signature
In the provided scans, only three spaced dots separate his signature from the name of the state that he represented, NY. But here, there are four of them, and they are non-spaced except for one space after the ellipsis. &mdash;68.194.250.198 21:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅, thanks Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:45, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Now can you put the spaces so it would look like this: "New York . . ." rather than "New York..."? --68.194.250.198 16:05, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * also ✅ -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:40, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Article I, Section 9 typo
Looking at the image here, I would like to propose this correction:

...unless when in Cases or of Rebellion or Invasion... —unsigned comment by Lee Choquette  (talk).

❌ -- it says "or" in the literal print as well. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Article 1, Section 9 Typo
The wiki version shows "unless when in Cases or Rebellion or Invasion"

This should read "unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion"

In other words, the first "or" should be "of" instead.

Please look at the original handwritten document. It's clearly "of" and not "or". http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Constitution_of_the_United_States%2C_page_2.jpg

Also, a modern depiction of the original, as cited on wiki, and found on the U.S. House of Representatives site, uses "of" instead of "or". http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

This almost certainly is an error, which I think it should be corrected please.

Also: your "source" page, which has a version with the same above mentioned typo, that was cited as the reason, given by 'George Orwell III', for not making the fix when it was pointed out earlier by someone else, has a typo in it.

"Author	United States Congressional Research Servive"

"Servive" should be "Service"

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:COTUS_(1992_Edition)_Part_6_of_15.djvu

This error on the 'spash' page may suggest that all the pages attached to it may not be 100% accurate, and therefore should not be considered the definitive reference for determining the accuracy of wiki's version of the original U.S. Constitution. Perhaps other references, like the original handwritten copy, or one of a U.S. Government site should be consulted, too. —unsigned comment by GeorgeJohn (talk).

✅ -- Many thanks for taking the time to detail then support the need for a correction. The .jpg you linked clearly shows the typo in the Literal Print. The small numbers (1 thru 4) along the left hand margin would have taken you to the appropriate page in the verification system (or Proofreading system as we call it) to make the changes yourself.

We are only as accurate as our contributors are - and in this case its the Government print that was at fault; we were merely following their lead. The pages in question have been vetted by at least 3 different editors to insure a lack of bias and subjectivity. Please don't let this one instance detract from our mission goals of full & accurate transcriptions. Thanks again. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:49, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Annotation of All Articles
What is the best way to add Constitution of the United States of America/Annotated to the top page? Found this page from the orphaned list. There is already on annotation for only Article 1, so I think we should keep both. Having multiple annotations will need some descriptive text to differentiate each version? Looking for recommendations on how to label the link to this version. -- DutchTreat (talk) 22:21, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Capitals & Emphasis
On the original document, the "d" in the word "defence' is in what seems to be lowercase, although the rest of the style indicates that it should have been a capital letter, if one compares the size of the "d" it is larger than the lower case "d" in the word below, so it should be reflected as a capital letter in the reproduced version which is based on the original document. Clearly and surely the intent was never that the word "defence" should be of any lesser importance than any of the other words - this should be fixed and the "d" in defence should be reflected as a capital letter, simply on the basis of the fact that it is larger than other lower case "d" in the consitution or then, if that fails, simply on intent. Zarpboer (talk) 06:53, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * eeek, can you remember when you were a newbie on Wikipedia - My comment/request relates to the Preamble, so sorry Zarpboer (talk) 07:03, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Error Correction
The present text of this page contains two mistakes with respect to the four-page original. Any curious person can easily verify these mistakes (as being real mistakes requiring fixes) by comparing the present language with the original documents, linked on this wiki. A user with editing power, who can correct these mistakes, should do so:

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3 (the old Electoral process for tight races): the last instance of "Representatives", shortly before "quorum" should be changed to read "Representation": "the Votes shall be taken by States, the REPRESENTATION from each State having one Vote; a quorum"...

Article II, Section 3. First clause (State of the Union requirement): "on" should be changed to "of", immediately before the "titular" phrase: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information OF the State of the Union,"... —unsigned comment by MinnesotanUser (talk).


 * ✅ Thanks for catching those. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:29, 3 February 2017 (UTC)