The Montana Constitution Collection is a project of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center and the Blewett School of Law. It contains a record of Montana’s constitutional history leading through the 1972 Constitutional Convention.

In the rush to ratify a constitution while political conditions were favorable to statehood, the 1889 Constitutional Convention largely readopted the 1884 Constitutional Convention, which in turn borrowed heavily from the 1876 Colorado Constitution. As Professors Larry Elison and Fritz Snyder explain, “The 1889 Constitution was enacted more as a tool to achieve statehood than to provide a well-thought-out structure of governance for the new state.” The chairman of that Convention, William Andrews Clark, expressed the delegates’ understanding that given the inevitable changes the new state would undergo, “[T]he genius and wisdom of our successors will eliminate, supplement, and amend” the text of the new constitution.

Eight decades took their toll on the 1889 Constitution’s utility for a changing state. The Constitution, and, therefore, state government, became increasingly rigid and unresponsive to the people. In response, Montana became the only state from the so-called “class of 1889” states admitted in that year (Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming), and the only state in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest, to adopt a second constitution.

The 1960s reapportionment revolution reallocated political power from rural areas to cities and towns under the principle of one-person, one-vote. In 1967 the reconstituted Legislature commissioned a report “to determine if [the 1889 Constitution] is adequately serving the current needs of the people." The resulting Legislative Council Report concluded that just 48% of the sections in the 1889 Constitution were adequate in that they did not “present a major obstacle to effective government.” The 1969 Legislature responded to the Council’s work with the appointment of a Constitutional Revision Commission and a referendum on calling a constitutional convention. More than sixty-five percent of Montana voters approved the call for a Constitutional Convention in November 1970. The state elected 100 delegates to the Convention in November 1971. After three days of orientation after the elections, the delegates formally convened in Helena on January 17, 1972 and met for 54 days. The delegates signed the proposed constitution and adjourned on March 24, 1972. Just over half of Montanans voting on the new constitution ratified it in June 1972. All but the legislative apportionment provisions of the 1972 Constitution took effect on July 1, 1973.

The Convention record spreads across several sets of documents. A seven-volume set published in 1979 and 1981 by the Montana Legislative Council contains a core of materials: convention rules and personnel; committees and witness lists; delegate proposals and committee reports; and a verbatim transcript of floor debates and votes. Before the Convention, the professional staff of the Montana Constitutional Convention Commission collected and prepared a series of documents to inform the delegates: Papers containing primary sources and prior studies by the Legislative Council and Constitutional Revision Commission, Memos concerning the organization of a constitutional convention, and Studies of subject-matter areas likely to be addressed in a new constitution. This collection also includes several less prominent but important sources: committee minutes and testimony providing a source for several key proposals and debates, the original 1972 and subsequent voter information pamphlets explaining the plain meaning of provisions, and contemporaneous and more recent commentaries on the constitutional debates.

Adapted from Professor Anthony Johnstone's article: The Constitutional Initiative in Montana, 71 Mont. L. Rev. 325 (2010).

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