1776 was a big year. Every American knows that these four digits signify the birth of America. But 1776 is important for another reason. It’s the year Americans declared their rights.
how were they? Partly due to the Declaration of Independence. But again other declaration.
How about celebrating? The Institute for Justice, where I work, hosts a conference called “The Institute for Justice.” other “Declaration of 1776” (emphasis in original). Co-sponsored by our friends at the Liberty & Law Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, this all-day conference (free lunch included!) will be held in Arlington, Virginia on April 10, 2026. The general public is welcome, including you. Learn more and register here.
Many pieces of the revolutionary puzzle
Anyone who knows the details of what happened in 1776 knows that no one thing created the United States. Of course, there’s also the Declaration of Independence, which was signed on July 4th (although, as John Adams would say, it was ratified on July 2nd). While the country appropriately celebrates the day as America’s Birthday, much more was done. Of all the activities of the Second Continental Congress, only part of it was the draft of its Declaration. And if you pull back the lens a little bit, you can see all kinds of other initiatives. The war had been going on at a tumultuous level since the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, and even before that had been smoldering for years in places like Boston. The writings of many revolutionaries, such as Thomas Paine and Sam Adams, who encouraged a break from the old order. The various colonies/states then adopted their own constitutions and formed new governments free from British rule.
All were important in creating a new nation. Our conference focuses on a final process that is often overlooked when Americans study their origins. And even more specifically than early state constitutions, the convention focuses on one aspect of state constitutions from 1776: the Declaration of Rights. these are, other declaration.
Build a constitutional airplane while flying
Many states adopted their constitutions in 1776, and some adopted their constitutions before the Fourth of July. This began after the Continental Congress began calling for the colonies to establish their own governments and prepare for the possibility of full independence. The first was in New Hampshire on January 5th, and the second in South Carolina on March 26th. These early constitutions were somewhat rudimentary, designed to allow the provisional government to establish some legitimacy while fighting wars and finding ways to govern itself. (New Hampshire had less than 1,000 words!)
Things continued to move toward independence, and Congress called for more states to join the game. The framers of the Constitution began adding more features. Several states have adopted Declarations of Rights, starting with Virginia in June. Strictly speaking, whether these were part of the Constitution or something else was a little unclear at the time, but in a few years they would come to be understood as part of the Constitution. Admittedly, it was a little unclear what these “constitutions” themselves were.
These were all new. There was no rulebook for how to carry out a successful republican revolution. The experience of Oliver Cromwell’s failed ‘protectorate’, governed according to ‘Means of Government’ after the English Civil War in the mid-1600s, was not a great precedent. It was a chapter in history that troubled the founders. The first “modern” written constitution was written only 20 years ago. It was created in 1755 by Pasquale Paoli for the short-lived Republic of Corsica. With little to guide them, the colonies fundamentally broke with Britain’s system of parliamentary sovereignty and adopted a haphazard “high law” constitution. As the Patriots navigated their way through the turmoil, they realized they needed a bold statement to show they were doing something revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence fulfilled much of that role. But the state constitution was also an important part of that effort. And when the states adopted them, they felt it right to also adopt a declaration of rights specifying what was not respected under the old government, but was protected under the new government.
Declarations here, there, and eventually everywhere
Eventually, in that fateful calendar year, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina adopted the Declaration of Rights. Additionally, although New Jersey did not have a separate “proclamation” in its constitution adopted on July 2, the text of the constitution itself contained many freedoms. Other states also adopted declarations of rights, or “bills,” in the coming years. There was Vermont in 1777 (technically a republic at the time), Massachusetts in 1780, New Hampshire in 1784, and Rhode Island in 1842, to name a few. (Rhode Island and Connecticut did not adopt constitutions during their founding period, relying instead on the Royal Charter, which was amended to remove the “royal” part; Connecticut eventually adopted an actual constitution in 1818. Rhode Island, near civil war, subsequently declared more rights.) And while the U.S. Constitution itself had no declaration of rights, these early national experiments nonetheless contributed to the rights inserted into the 1999 Constitution and the remaining rights added by the first ten amendments, which later became known as the Bill of Rights.
When read today, these declarations often seem familiar because they articulate the central tenets of the American creed: freedom of speech and the press, strict warrant requirements, guarantees of jury trials, and that “all men are created equal and free.” And they had ancient roots, from Magna Carta to the 1689 Declaration of the Rights of Parliament. But they were also new. It is radical and lights a new light of freedom and hope for all humanity.
a version This article first appeared on the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement blog.
Anthony Sanders is director of the Center for Judicial Engagement at the Institute for Justice..
Recommended quote: Anthony Sanders Other proclamations of 1776Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (March 9, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/other-declarations-1776
