New York’s First Constitution Was a Reaction to British Rule 

This essay is part of a 50-state series about the nation’s constitutions. We’ve asked an expert from each state to dive into their constitution, narrate its history, identify its quirks, and summarize its most essential components for our readers.

New York’s first constitution — written during the early stages of the Revolutionary War in early 1777 — was the “one state constitution that Madison endorsed almost completely.”

This is not surprising, considering that 33-year-old John Jay was a primary author of the New York document. He and James Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton, later joined in writing the Federalist Papers under a single pseudonym in order to promote the ratification of the federal Constitution. The New York document’s other authors included 25-year-old Gouverneur Morris and 31-year-old Robert R. Livingston (later the state’s first chancellor).

The Continental Congress had passed a resolution on May 10, 1776 calling for the “respective assemblies and conventions of the United Colonies” to form new governments that would “best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in general.” The provincial congress of New York responded to this call by appointing a committee to report a plan for a new form of government.

But the Battle of Long Island pushed aside the business of the new government. Fought from August 27–29, 1776, it was the first major battle after Americans declared independence and resulted in British control of Long Island and significant loss of American troops.

The committee presented a draft of the constitution to the convention the following March and received final approval on April 20, 1777 at the Ulster County courthouse. The document was read in public for the first time on the front steps of the courthouse two days later. After its adoption, copies of it were printed for public dissemination, and one of the few remaining from the original printing is on display in the Ulster County Courthouse.

Rooted in Rebellion

In the midst of the rebellion against the English crown, the drafters made a point of explaining the prevailing situation, including recitation of the abuses by the king and the parliament.

“Whereas the many tyrannical and oppressive usurpations of the King and Parliament of Great Britain on the rights and liberties of the people of the American colonies had reduced them to the necessity of introducing a government by congresses and committees, as temporary expedients,” they wrote, “and to exist no longer than the grievances of the people should remain without redress.”

They went on to explain that citizens of the colonies had been “excluded . . . from the protection of his Crown.” The king had refused to address the colonies’ grievances, they said, and the colonists expected “the whole force” of the kingdom of Great Brittain would be used to destroy the people of the colonies.

New York’s 1777 document also quoted Thomas Jefferson’s language in the Declaration of Independence as to the right of the people to abolish — or, in the American case, break away from — an abusive government.

Governance Under the New York Constitution

When it came to self-governance, constitution writers of the 18th century in New York and elsewhere were writing on a clean slate, but drew on a host of documents, political philosophies, and cultural values formed over the centuries, including the Magna Carta, contemporaneous ideas about due process of law, and the Petition of Right of 1628, which outlined certain individual liberties for people living in England at the time.

The document was founded on rule by the people, a concept at the heart of the divorce from the English monarchy. Consider the language of the first article of New York’s 1777 constitution: “No authority shall, on any pretense whatever, be exercised over the people or members of this State but such as shall be derived from and granted by them.”

The words sound reasonable enough 230 years later, but when first penned, they were revolutionary — figuratively and literally. That 1777 Constitution is the birthright of New Yorkers.

Yet even against a decidedly anti-English backdrop, the drafters transferred the English legal system to the new state, constitutional history Charles Zebina Lincoln has written. At the heart of the constitution’s governance provisions were ideas lifted directly from the English model. For example, the constitution’s notions of due process and separation of powers principles were borrowed from the British.

As to the role of the executive, New York’s constitution was like Goldilocks’s cereal — not so cold as to deprecate the role of the population, but not so hot as to cast out all executive power. It gave the governor power over state military forces and to take care that laws are faithfully executed, among other powers.

New York’s constitution served as a model for provisions in the U.S. Constitution relating to the executive. The American colonies had had their fill of executive power in the form of kingship, but Madison recognized that a constitution leaning too far in the opposite direction — with no executive power — would be inefficient and dangerous. He deemed New York’s constitution, for that hour, just right.

New York’s Bill of Rights

The guarantees of a later article in New York’s original constitution are impressive: “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this State, to all mankind.”

But the 1777 Constitution did not expand on rights much beyond that provision, and it was not long before the population wanted rights in written form. In 1787, the New York legislature adopted “An Act concerning the Rights and Citizens of this State” — a statutory bill of rights, covering trial by jury, the right of petition, free speech protection, excessive bail and fines, cruel and unusual punishments, quartering soldiers, and, most notably, “due process of law.”

In using those words in 1791 in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, Madison relied on New York’s 1787 statutory bill of rights and the amendments New York proposed at its 1788 ratification convention for the U.S. Constitution.

The phrase “bill of attainder” — punishing someone without trial — is scarcely known or used today, but in its heyday was a powerful weapon. The practice goes back to the Lancastrians and Yorkists of 15th century England, who used acts of attainder as a tool to destroy each other. During the War of the Roses (1455–1487), those rival factions relied on acts of attainder to get rid of the ministers whom the king ceased to trust or of persons considered dangerous to the state. Appreciating the lessons of history, the drafters of the New York Constitution prohibited bills of attainder.

New York’s second constitution came in 1821, and included a full-throated Bill of Rights, similar to the statutory bill of rights of 1787. That Bill of Rights was largely retained in New York’s current constitution, adopted in 1894.

Judicial Interpretations of New Yorkers’ Rights

Though New York’s language is similar to the federal Bill of Rights of 1791, New York’s high court has interpreted it over the decades as granting broader rights and liberties than federal interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.

In 1986’s People v. P.J. Video, the court found that the New York Constitution’s Article I imposed a more exacting standard for the issuance of search warrants authorizing the seizure of allegedly obscene material than does the federal Constitution. The standard of review that should be applied to protect the rights of New York citizens imposes a specific, nondelegable burden on the magistrate, the court held, which requires that he, not the police, determine probable cause, and requires that his determination be objectively verifiable.

Chapadeau v. Utica-Observer Dispatch held in 1975 that a citizen suing for defamation over speech relating to a matter of public interest must prove gross irresponsibility as opposed to ordinary negligence — the minimum standard under the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Gertz v. Robert Welch.

In 1968’s People v. Arthur, the court held that a waiver of the right to counsel is valid under federal constitutional law, but invalid under the New York Constitution. 

Unique Provisions

In contrast to the U.S. Constitution, New York’s has guarantees for conservationist concerns, care for the needy, and public schooling for a sound basic education.

For example, in Article XIV, the constitution provides that “the lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.” Thanks in part to this provision, New York is home to the largest publicly preserved stretch of wilderness in the United States, the six million acre Adirondack Park. 

Article XVII, meanwhile, guarantees that “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions, and in such manner and by such means, as the legislature may from time to time determine.”

And in Article XI, the state constitution provides that “the legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated.” This provision — some version of which appears in every state’s constitution — has been the subject of multiple important cases, including about adequate funding, segregation, and more

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In all, New York has adopted four constitutions (1777, 1821, 1846, and 1894) and held eight constitutional conventions (1801, 1821, 1846, 1867, 1894, 1915, 1938, and 1967). This rich constitutional history, including an early commitment to rule by the people and multiple unique provisions, should be a source of pride to New Yorkers across the state.

Albert M. Rosenblatt is the Historian for New York’s Unified Court System and teaches at NYU Law School. He served as a judge in New York, including its highest court, the Court of Appeals.

Suggested Citation: Albert M. Rosenblatt, New York’s First Constitution Was a Reaction to British Rule, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jun. 11, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-yorks-first-constitution-was-reaction-british-rule