While traditional civics and political history education focuses on foundational documents like Constitutions, there is often a lack of attention to how such documents were produced. History teachers, legal scholars, and even legal practitioners will want to check out the Quill Project, a research platform from Pembroke College, University of Oxford and the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University. The project seeks to "enhance understanding of some of the world's foundational legal texts," by revealing the "negotiation of law in formal settings." Using tailor-made software, the platform allows users to digitally manipulate historical documents to reconstruct the processes of negotiation, debate, and discussion which resulted in texts such as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Readers may wish to begin by consulting the "User Guide," and once familiar with the software, can use the "Advanced Tools" to search and compare texts or create visualizations of statistics, timelines, activities, and documents related to specific legal texts. The Quill Project is directed by Nicholas Cole, political historian at the University of Oxford.
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