The Arizona Constitution Project
Providing the state of Arizona easier access to its constitution and the story of its creation.
Arizona is a young state, founded within the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents — and even founded by some of our parents and grandparents.
The Arizona Constitution Project at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership aims to tell the story of the state through the creation of its constitution by creating the first public resource for the study of the state’s founding document. Joined by ARTIS International and the Quill Project at Oxford University, the school has created this civic education initiative that will allow citizens and scholars alike to better understand Arizona's unique contribution to constitutional democracy.
Through the Arizona Constitution Project, we aim to:
- Encourage citizens to know and appreciate the political history of Arizona and America’s system of constitutional federalism.
- Provide civic education resources to bring Arizona’s constitutional tradition to the state’s K-12 schools, through a website and Arizona pocket constitution.
- Help scholars better understand liberal democracy by incorporating Arizona’s state history into the Quill Project’s database of worldwide constitution-making.
The Arizona Constitution Project consists of three main components: the Arizona Pocket Constitution, the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution and the digital Arizona Constitution.
Three different versions
The 1912 Edition
This is the text of the Constitution with which Arizona entered the Union in 1912. It is, with one exception, the same as the text of the 1910 Constitution adopted by the Constitutional Convention that met from October 10 to December 9 of that year.
The Unabridged Edition
The most current version of the Arizona Constitution in its entirety. This version is current as of Spring 2023.
The Essential Edition
This “Essential Arizona Constitution” has been abridged to omit technical detail that is important to governance but unlikely to be of common use to the average citizen. In choosing what to excerpt, we have focused on two themes
- the core operations and ideas of the Arizona Constitution
- its features that make it distinct from other state constitutions as well as the U.S. Constitution.
Coming soon: Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution
The Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution is an online resource for Arizona residents and constitutional scholars to study Arizona’s founding document. The repository will consist of a digital, searchable version of the Arizona Constitution, as well as detailed accounts of the story of the Arizona Constitution.
We encourage citizens to share any documents, mementos, scrapbooks or anything else that could help share the collective story of our state’s constitution. Over time, scholars at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership will build the narrative of how our constitution was developed and who made it possible.
Contact us.
Part of the mission of the Arizona Constitution Project is to make the Arizona Constitution readily available to citizens of the state. To do that, the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership has developed a pocket version of the Arizona Constitution.
To order pocket constitutions for your class or community group, email: AZConstitution@asu.edu