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Constitution Day Resources

13 September 2006 by Jennie Burroughs

Constitution Day is September 17th. The holiday commemorates the signing of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787.

• The National Archives offers resources for Constitution Day, including a digitized copy of the Constitution and lesson plans for teachers.
• The Department of Education provides background information on the holiday and teaching resources via the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) website.
• The National Constitution Center offers a directory of web-based resources and lesson plans.
• The Library of Congress provides a large number of digital resources for Constitutional scholarship in the American Memory Collection, including:

• Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
• The James Madison Papers

Public Law 108-447, signed on December 8, 2004, designates September 17 as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day and “requires each educational institution that receives Federal funds for a fiscal year to hold an educational program on the U.S. Constitution on September 17 of such year for its students.” The University of Montana Constitution Day lecture, “The Constitution, the Amendment Process and the Abolition of Slavery,” will be held on Monday, September 18, at 7:30 P.M. in the Urey Lecture Hall. The lecture will be given by Herman Belz, Professor of History at the University of Maryland.