August 8, 2025 • 11 mins
Dr. Beinberg explores how colonial charters formed the foundation for American democracy and evolved into state constitutions after independence. Colonial experiences with local self-governance created the blueprint for America's revolutionary approach to divided sovereignty that continues to shape our federal system today.
• Colonial charters were agreements between the British monarch and colonists, while constitutions were created by the people themselves
• Colonies were established for different purposes – religious freedom in New England, commercial interests in Jamestown, refuges for specific religious groups elsewhere
• Colonial differences created varied political cultures while sharing a desire for "British liberties"
• When preparing for independence, colonies transformed their charters into state constitutions
• Massachusetts created an innovative constitution-writing process under John Adams with town-by-town approval
• The concept of divided sovereignty between state and federal governments emerged from colonial experience
• British observers found American federalism confusing, believing sovereignty needed a single ultimate authority
• State governments continue to handle most governance in America, a direct legacy of colonial charters
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey listeners.
So in this episode Dr Beinbergis going to be answering the
question how did the EnglishBill of Rights shape the US Bill
of Rights?
Dr Beinberg, over to you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yep.
So the question of how thecolonial charters lay the
groundwork for Americandemocracy is, I think, something
that continues to that.
I think continues to berelevant insofar as the colonial
charters serve as, in somesense, for many of the states of
first crack, what becomes thestate constitutions?
Can I ask really quick what isthe difference between a group
of colonists or, in some sensesort of often sort of
(00:48):
businessmen or you knowemigrants or you know folks on a
ship and the British monarch.
So these are originallyeffectively made between a
charter granted by the Britishmonarch to a group of people,
Whereas a constitution and thisis something that James Madison
and John Adams will discuss andI'll come back to this in a
(01:09):
second but a constitution iseffectively a group of people, a
group of people creatingsomething themselves and signing
it themselves.
So, like some of them are alittle hazy, like the Mayflower
Compact is sort of the group ofthe folks on the boat.
They sort of write it all upbut they sort of say that
they're serving.
So the Mayflower Compact is nota charter in the same sense.
(01:30):
They already have effectively acharter from the king to deploy
over there.
But the compact sort of isinternally amongst themselves.
So the Mayflower Compact and Iknow we'll talk more about that
in another session is closer toin some sense a constitution,
where it's made by the peoplethemselves as opposed to a group
of people with the claimant ofthe sovereign.
(01:52):
So that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So is it fair to say then, like the colonies had
charters, but once they becamestates, we created constitutions
.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Exactly exactly.
So the charters exist and thecharters have variation.
They're about a hundred yearperiod when they're, and
sometimes some of the colonieswill get sort of carved up or
moved or folded into.
There's two New Jerseys.
At one point colonies are heldby one person who holds two
(02:28):
colonies.
So there's a little bit ofvariation in terms of what the
number is and what's in thespecific guarantees, right.
And this is again sort ofpreviewing.
Why the Americans are soinvested in sort of local
government and what we wouldlater call federalism is because
these colonies, colonialcharters, often have quite a bit
of variation.
The colonies themselves areestablished for different
purposes, right.
(02:48):
So the ones in New England arelargely groups of people who are
upset by the direction of theAnglican church, who want to
build sort of different versions.
And there's disagreement youknow, the pilgrims and the
Puritans is effectively adisagreement over whether you
want to reform from within theAnglican Church or sort of leave
it in order to better practicesort of a more proper
(03:09):
understanding of Christian faith.
But it's a technicaldistinction in terms of what
they want to do with theAnglican Church, but sort of
what they think proper Christianfaith ought to look like.
So the New England and this iswhy, you know, then Rhode Island
sort of spins off because it'sfolks who think that in fact
they still got it wrong again inMassachusetts.
So the New England ones oftenhave this sort of more
(03:29):
particular religious bent.
The Jamestown colony isprimarily, but not exclusively,
commercial.
It does have a sort ofmissionary element to it as well
.
Right, georgia is initiallyfounded as a colony of sort of
debtors and prisoners and sortof in that sense.
Right, you know, pennsylvaniais going to be for protecting
(03:53):
Quakers, maryland for Catholics,right Now, in some sense they
converge later on.
But they still do have thissort of variation in political
culture and they have a littlevariation in terms of their
structures and sort of therights that are discussed in the
charters.
But these are understood by theAmericans as a guarantee and an
(04:13):
establishment, again,particularly of a local
government.
We are fellow Brits, we wantBritish liberties.
Please basically continue tofollow the old rules.
And they're realizing that infact it's not.
(04:39):
It's that the Britishgovernment have a fundamental
disagreement on sort ofconstitutional principles, right
, is that increasingly lookslike an impassable or an
impassable divide between thecolonies and the home country.
The Second Continental Congresstells the American colonies.
We're getting ready to declareindependence, we will govern
ourselves now.
(04:59):
And this is in some sense aneasy thing to do, insofar as
they say we've already beendoing it.
That's what we've been tryingto convince the British
government all this time, thatwe've been governing ourselves
for the most part.
And so they say, hey, let's getready for this.
We need to start writingconstitutions, because they have
in mind this is how you dothings in the colonies.
(05:20):
You write constitutions ofstructures, you write
constitutions with rights andsome of the colonies, at least
early in the American RevolutionI'm going to oversimplify it
and be a little glib here butthey basically take where it
says the governor is appointedby the king and they scratch
that out and say and thegovernor is, like, appointed by
the legislature or something.
But otherwise they sort ofleave the charters because again
(05:41):
they're concentrating onwinning the war and they don't
really have the time to sitthere and have a sustained
constitutional convention formonths and months, and months.
That's not true in all cases.
Pennsylvania rights are reallyfascinating and eventually they
will later conclude kind ofcrazy state constitution.
But these charters do serve asthe foundation for many of them
(06:04):
and a couple of cases they dothe opposite, where there are a
couple of states that are stillusing their colonial charters,
again with the sort of KingShallow Point governor scratched
out until the mid 1800s, thereare a couple of them that are
still using the old document,just with a couple of
annotations effectively attachedto it.
So in 1780, you see, probablythe first major, major, major
(06:27):
example of what we would thinkof as how to make a constitution
, which is John Adams, when he'sbriefly allowed to basically
come back from running aroundplaying diplomat in England or
in not England, excuse me, inEurope most of the time helps
write the MassachusettsConstitution and they really
take seriously the idea that thepeople need to hear earlier
(06:49):
question of the differencebetween a charter and a
constitution.
They take seriously the ideathat people need to buy into
this and so they actually haveit as an almost iterative
process.
Iterative meaning it's goingback and forth where Adams and
Cruz sort of write it.
They send it back out to thetowns and they say what do you
think?
And they sort of say approve,disapprove of these parts, and
then eventually they send itback and say do we, the people
(07:11):
of Massachusetts and all thesetowns, agree to this document
that we think is going to be ourfundamental guarantee, and it
(07:34):
includes, from their perspective, many of the rights and
understandings that hadcontinued on from the charters
or, in other cases, had beensort of part of their implicit
understanding of British liberty.
So the charters in a practicalsense lay the groundwork for
American democracy by creatingthe structures by which the
colonies the individual colonies, it should be emphasized govern
themselves.
So they get practice, in thatthey get understanding of this.
This is what our system isfundamentally about.
But then they also in many wayscreate the starting points for
what become the stateconstitutions, which arguably to
(07:55):
this day are still I mean, thestate governments do most things
in the American politicalsystem, even to this day, and so
they lay the groundwork forwhat becomes the state
constitutions, which are whatstructure our primary governing,
our primary governments today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So the colonies, I mean we're kind of almost 13
separate, not separate countries.
But it's not like when we thinkof the United States today,
right, we're kind of all underone umbrella.
They all had their own identity.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I might actually push back a little bit on the
umbrella thing, insofar as Ithink one of the things that the
US Constitution does and we'lltalk more about this with the
Federalist Papers but the ideais that for some purposes
there's the umbrella, but forother purposes the states are
effectively still quasi-nationsin a sense, where they still
(08:43):
have primary governing authority, except where and this is sort
of a technical distinction abouthow you draw the line but the
US Constitution does say thatthe Constitution is
fundamentally supreme, but itdoesn't necessarily say that the
federal government is supremein and of itself.
It's supreme where theConstitution makes it.
But where the Constitutiondoesn't make the Fed supreme
(09:06):
under the original Constitution,then put in the Tenth Amendment
Again, these are things we'lltalk about more later the states
do retain primary governingauthority.
But certainly at the time of, atthe time of the revolution,
they understand themselves to bequasi independent.
This is why there's actually alot of interesting discussion
about United States.
To what extent does that?
(09:26):
To what extent are they united?
The Articles of Confederationdescribes them as basically
united as a league.
The US Constitution does createa single nation, but one that
sort of continues to dividepower, and this is one of the
things where the British,looking on this later, think
(09:52):
this is crazy.
This sort of anticipates thetheme we'll talk about later.
But the Americans in Madisonwill say, yeah, we can sort of
divide sovereignty like this wecan have the state constitution
supreme in some spheres and thefederal government supreme in
other spheres and restrictingthe states in some spheres.
We can do this.
Sovereignty is with the peopleand they can sort of allocate
the power how they want to do it, and the Brits think this is
crazy.
You ultimately need to have oneinstitution that's sovereign.
(10:14):
But this foundational sense,this idea of divided local power
, is something that is a legacyof these colonial charters.
Hey listeners.
So in this episode Dr Beinbergis going to be answering the
question how did the EnglishBill of Rights shape the US Bill
of Rights?
Dr Beinberg, over to you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yep.
So the question of how thecolonial charters lay the
groundwork for Americandemocracy is, I think, something
that continues to that.
I think continues to berelevant insofar as the colonial
charters serve as, in somesense, for many of the states of
first crack, what becomes thestate constitutions?
Can I ask really quick what isthe difference between a group
of colonists or, in some sensesort of often sort of
(00:48):
businessmen or you knowemigrants or you know folks on a
ship and the British monarch.
So these are originallyeffectively made between a
charter granted by the Britishmonarch to a group of people,
Whereas a constitution and thisis something that James Madison
and John Adams will discuss andI'll come back to this in a
(01:09):
second but a constitution iseffectively a group of people, a
group of people creatingsomething themselves and signing
it themselves.
So, like some of them are alittle hazy, like the Mayflower
Compact is sort of the group ofthe folks on the boat.
They sort of write it all upbut they sort of say that
they're serving.
So the Mayflower Compact is nota charter in the same sense.
(01:30):
They already have effectively acharter from the king to deploy
over there.
But the compact sort of isinternally amongst themselves.
So the Mayflower Compact and Iknow we'll talk more about that
in another session is closer toin some sense a constitution,
where it's made by the peoplethemselves as opposed to a group
of people with the claimant ofthe sovereign.
(01:52):
So that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So is it fair to say then, like the colonies had
charters, but once they becamestates, we created constitutions
.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Exactly exactly.
So the charters exist and thecharters have variation.
They're about a hundred yearperiod when they're, and
sometimes some of the colonieswill get sort of carved up or
moved or folded into.
There's two New Jerseys.
At one point colonies are heldby one person who holds two
(02:28):
colonies.
So there's a little bit ofvariation in terms of what the
number is and what's in thespecific guarantees, right.
And this is again sort ofpreviewing.
Why the Americans are soinvested in sort of local
government and what we wouldlater call federalism is because
these colonies, colonialcharters, often have quite a bit
of variation.
The colonies themselves areestablished for different
purposes, right.
(02:48):
So the ones in New England arelargely groups of people who are
upset by the direction of theAnglican church, who want to
build sort of different versions.
And there's disagreement youknow, the pilgrims and the
Puritans is effectively adisagreement over whether you
want to reform from within theAnglican Church or sort of leave
it in order to better practicesort of a more proper
(03:09):
understanding of Christian faith.
But it's a technicaldistinction in terms of what
they want to do with theAnglican Church, but sort of
what they think proper Christianfaith ought to look like.
So the New England and this iswhy, you know, then Rhode Island
sort of spins off because it'sfolks who think that in fact
they still got it wrong again inMassachusetts.
So the New England ones oftenhave this sort of more
(03:29):
particular religious bent.
The Jamestown colony isprimarily, but not exclusively,
commercial.
It does have a sort ofmissionary element to it as well
.
Right, georgia is initiallyfounded as a colony of sort of
debtors and prisoners and sortof in that sense.
Right, you know, pennsylvaniais going to be for protecting
(03:53):
Quakers, maryland for Catholics,right Now, in some sense they
converge later on.
But they still do have thissort of variation in political
culture and they have a littlevariation in terms of their
structures and sort of therights that are discussed in the
charters.
But these are understood by theAmericans as a guarantee and an
(04:13):
establishment, again,particularly of a local
government.
We are fellow Brits, we wantBritish liberties.
Please basically continue tofollow the old rules.
And they're realizing that infact it's not.
(04:39):
It's that the Britishgovernment have a fundamental
disagreement on sort ofconstitutional principles, right
, is that increasingly lookslike an impassable or an
impassable divide between thecolonies and the home country.
The Second Continental Congresstells the American colonies.
We're getting ready to declareindependence, we will govern
ourselves now.
(04:59):
And this is in some sense aneasy thing to do, insofar as
they say we've already beendoing it.
That's what we've been tryingto convince the British
government all this time, thatwe've been governing ourselves
for the most part.
And so they say, hey, let's getready for this.
We need to start writingconstitutions, because they have
in mind this is how you dothings in the colonies.
(05:20):
You write constitutions ofstructures, you write
constitutions with rights andsome of the colonies, at least
early in the American RevolutionI'm going to oversimplify it
and be a little glib here butthey basically take where it
says the governor is appointedby the king and they scratch
that out and say and thegovernor is, like, appointed by
the legislature or something.
But otherwise they sort ofleave the charters because again
(05:41):
they're concentrating onwinning the war and they don't
really have the time to sitthere and have a sustained
constitutional convention formonths and months, and months.
That's not true in all cases.
Pennsylvania rights are reallyfascinating and eventually they
will later conclude kind ofcrazy state constitution.
But these charters do serve asthe foundation for many of them
(06:04):
and a couple of cases they dothe opposite, where there are a
couple of states that are stillusing their colonial charters,
again with the sort of KingShallow Point governor scratched
out until the mid 1800s, thereare a couple of them that are
still using the old document,just with a couple of
annotations effectively attachedto it.
So in 1780, you see, probablythe first major, major, major
(06:27):
example of what we would thinkof as how to make a constitution
, which is John Adams, when he'sbriefly allowed to basically
come back from running aroundplaying diplomat in England or
in not England, excuse me, inEurope most of the time helps
write the MassachusettsConstitution and they really
take seriously the idea that thepeople need to hear earlier
(06:49):
question of the differencebetween a charter and a
constitution.
They take seriously the ideathat people need to buy into
this and so they actually haveit as an almost iterative
process.
Iterative meaning it's goingback and forth where Adams and
Cruz sort of write it.
They send it back out to thetowns and they say what do you
think?
And they sort of say approve,disapprove of these parts, and
then eventually they send itback and say do we, the people
(07:11):
of Massachusetts and all thesetowns, agree to this document
that we think is going to be ourfundamental guarantee, and it
(07:34):
includes, from their perspective, many of the rights and
understandings that hadcontinued on from the charters
or, in other cases, had beensort of part of their implicit
understanding of British liberty.
So the charters in a practicalsense lay the groundwork for
American democracy by creatingthe structures by which the
colonies the individual colonies, it should be emphasized govern
themselves.
So they get practice, in thatthey get understanding of this.
This is what our system isfundamentally about.
But then they also in many wayscreate the starting points for
what become the stateconstitutions, which arguably to
(07:55):
this day are still I mean, thestate governments do most things
in the American politicalsystem, even to this day, and so
they lay the groundwork forwhat becomes the state
constitutions, which are whatstructure our primary governing,
our primary governments today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So the colonies, I mean we're kind of almost 13
separate, not separate countries.
But it's not like when we thinkof the United States today,
right, we're kind of all underone umbrella.
They all had their own identity.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I might actually push back a little bit on the
umbrella thing, insofar as Ithink one of the things that the
US Constitution does and we'lltalk more about this with the
Federalist Papers but the ideais that for some purposes
there's the umbrella, but forother purposes the states are
effectively still quasi-nationsin a sense, where they still
(08:43):
have primary governing authority, except where and this is sort
of a technical distinction abouthow you draw the line but the
US Constitution does say thatthe Constitution is
fundamentally supreme, but itdoesn't necessarily say that the
federal government is supremein and of itself.
It's supreme where theConstitution makes it.
But where the Constitutiondoesn't make the Fed supreme
(09:06):
under the original Constitution,then put in the Tenth Amendment
Again, these are things we'lltalk about more later the states
do retain primary governingauthority.
But certainly at the time of, atthe time of the revolution,
they understand themselves to bequasi independent.
This is why there's actually alot of interesting discussion
about United States.
To what extent does that?
(09:26):
To what extent are they united?
The Articles of Confederationdescribes them as basically
united as a league.
The US Constitution does createa single nation, but one that
sort of continues to dividepower, and this is one of the
things where the British,looking on this later, think
(09:52):
this is crazy.
This sort of anticipates thetheme we'll talk about later.
But the Americans in Madisonwill say, yeah, we can sort of
divide sovereignty like this wecan have the state constitution
supreme in some spheres and thefederal government supreme in
other spheres and restrictingthe states in some spheres.
We can do this.
Sovereignty is with the peopleand they can sort of allocate
the power how they want to do it, and the Brits think this is
crazy.
You ultimately need to have oneinstitution that's sovereign.
(10:14):
But this foundational sense,this idea of divided local power
, is something that is a legacyof these colonial charters.
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