Scholars reflect on the enduring legacy of New Hampshire’s constitution, 250 years later

Emily Durst wrote furiously in her notebook, even as the 100 people around her glued their eyes on a three-person panel in the middle of the room.

Durst, a third-year law student at UNH’s Franklin Pierce Law School, had come to hear about how the state of New Hampshire became the first to carve out its autonomy and learn more about the state constitution.

“I’m curious to understand it on a much deeper level,” she said. “It was cool to learn that New Hampshire was one of the states at the forefront of developing the adequate and independent state law grounds.”

Signed and adopted 250 years ago on Jan. 5, 1776, New Hampshire’s state constitution symbolized a break from British monarchy and provided a precursor to the national Declaration of Independence, approved only six months later. A panel of law professors and constitutional scholars retold the story behind the document at UNH on Thursday, reflecting on the state’s historic leap towards democracy.

New Hampshire Superior Court Judge William Delker moderated the panel, which consisted of Robert Williams, former director of the Center for State Constitutional Studies, and Lorianne Updike Schulzke, a visiting associate professor of constitutional history and law at Yale Law School.

New Hampshire did not have a charter that it relied on for its self-governance, Schulzke explained. Instead, John Sullivan, a key player in the state’s early history, fabricated a petition before legislative approval.

“John Sullivan had this feint, he made up this petition,” she said. “It opened up the doors of Congress to begin thinking about allowing states to take up government, to start this process of writing what we now call constitutions.”

Michael Haley Goldman, executive director of New Hampshire Humanities, which partnered with UNH to produce the panel event, said it’s important to reflect on the history of the original draft to understand how it continues to shape the state today.

“It’s being in a shared dialogue about who we are and where we come from and where we’re going that really makes us a community,” he said.

NH Humanities is hosting over 80 small events across 40 municipalities throughout the year in a series called US@250. The programs will show excerpts from Ken Burns’s PBS documentary “The American Revolution” and involve an activity determined by the community to explore the documentary further — from a children’s art contest to a cemetery walk.

The idea for a panel occurred to Delker when he noticed the gap in original documentation of the state constitution. He approached Anna Brown, executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service, last year and together they began gathering materials and holding informational sessions to prepare the event.

“This is a really important service that would really benefit the legal community and our community as a whole, because this otherwise sounds like it’s going to be lost history,” Brown said.

Williams, one of the panelists, mulled the principles of the state constitution and their enduring relevance today. The document, he said, is a clear reflection of the people it represents.

“There are all kinds of ways that state constitutions reflect the philosophy of the revolution today: people’s involvement in government,” he said.

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