Legal scholars and researchers from around the world gathered Thursday, Sept. 15 at Utah Valley University (UVU) during the UVU Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS) Constitution Day Conference, held in observance of Constitution Day on Sept. 17. Speakers presented on the Reconstruction Amendments.

The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known as the Reconstruction Amendments because they were added after the U.S. Civil War during the Reconstruction era.

“This Reconstruction was a success,” CCS Wood Research Assistant Erica Croft said. “This gave us the 13th Amendment, the abolition of slavery; the 14th Amendment, the creation and establishment of the rights of national citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, which raised the color bar from the right to vote. Building these amendments was an extraordinary project.”

Senior Research Fellow Dr. Nicholas Cole is the director of the Quill Project, a joint effort between CCS and Pembroke College to digitally model the creation of constitutions and other similar documents. Dr. Cole spoke of his project’s efforts during the conference.

“Our job really is to turn the detailed records of debate into something intelligible,” Cole said. “None of the work that we've done would have been possible without the most amazing collaboration between the place that I work, Pembroke College in Oxford, which is 400 years old next year, and Utah Valley University, one of the world's newest universities. This collaboration is one of the great privileges of my career.”

The mission of CCS is to increase constitutional literacy at the local, state, and national levels in a nonpartisan matter. You can learn more about CCS by visiting the CCS website.