Quill, ASU & Artis

The Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution is a new project designed to create a repository of the public and private documents that shaped the Arizona State Constitution and to model the creation of the constitution in the Quill platform, opening up research into the state constitution process.

The project is a collaboration between the Quill Project, Artis International, and the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. The partnership was initiated on 14 April 2018 by a legislative proclamation in the Arizona House of Representatives, and has bi-partisan support in both State Houses. During a two-day workshop in Pembroke College in December 2018 an ambitious research agenda for the project was agreed, as well as a comprehensive programme of educational and outreach activities. The project was then formally launched on 14 February 2019 at a press conference in the State Capitol Building.

Ultimately, the model of the Arizona constitutional conventions will sit in the Quill platform alongside the models of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the Bill of Rights, and other state constitutions, opening doors for comparative work into the writing of some of the founding documents of the United States. Quill’s innovative digital platform enhances research and education into formal processes of negotiation through unprecedented access to the records of those negotiations and a range of analytical tools and interactive models.