The Constitution of the State of Minnesota was initially approved by the residents of
Minnesota Territory
The Territory of Minnesota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 3, 1849, until May 11, 1858, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Minnesota and west ...
in a special
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
held on October 13, 1857, and was
ratified
Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties inten ...
by the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
on May 11, 1858, marking the admittance of
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
to the
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
. Nearly 120
amendment An amendment is a formal or official change made to a law, contract, constitution, or other legal document. It is based on the verb to amend, which means to change for better. Amendments can add, remove, or update parts of these agreements. The ...
s have been approved (often multiple items at once), with perhaps the most significant being a reorganization in 1974 to simplify the document, making it easier for modern readers to comprehend and reducing the extensive verbiage. It is believed that the constitution was even amended twice prior to ratification.
Creation and ratification
An election in Minnesota Territory to select
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
and
Democratic delegates to a state
constitutional convention was held on June 1, 1857, following passage of an
enabling act
An enabling act is a piece of legislation by which a legislative body grants an entity which depends on it (for authorization or legitimacy) the power to take certain actions. For example, enabling acts often establish government agencies to carr ...
by the
U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...
on February 26 of that year ("The Enabling Act for a State of Minnesota"). The Republican version, as drafted by William Winthrop, a Yale Law graduate, abolitionist, future Civil War officer, and leading scholar of military law, called for universal male suffrage.
[Joshua E. Kastenberg, The Blackstone of Military Law: Colonel William Winthrop (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 53-68] The convention was held in
Saint Paul
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
from July 13 to August 29. However, the divisions between the two political parties were so great that they each held their own separate conventions and never met together aside from five people from each party who met in a
conference committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
to create a document acceptable to both sides. Still, the tension was so extreme that delegates would not sign anything that had previously been signed by a member of the complementary convention.
In the end, each convention signed their own copies of the document. The two were essentially identical, but had about 300 differences in
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
,
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, and wording because of errors in transcription produced as copyists worked late into the night on August 28. The Republican version, written on white
paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distrib ...
, ran 39 pages and was signed by 53 delegates, while the Democratic version, written on blue-tinged paper, was 37 pages long and had 51 signatures.
On October 13, an election to approve the constitution was held.
Ballot
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...
s only provided for an affirmative answer, which probably reduced the number of negative votes since doing so required altering the ballot. The tally was 30,055 for acceptance and 571 for rejection.
The territorial secretary, a Democrat, sent a certified copy of the Democratic version to
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
to be ratified by the Senate. A copy of the Republican version was also sent by an unknown party, and there is good historical evidence to show that both versions were available to Congress members. Additionally, the Republican version was sent with the
bill
Bill(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States)
* Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature
* Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer
* Bill, a bird or animal's beak
Plac ...
returned to Minnesota.
The
Minnesota State Legislature
The Minnesota Legislature is the bicameral legislature of the U.S. state of Minnesota consisting of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Senators are elected from 67 single-member districts. In order to account for decen ...
began to convene before the constitution was ratified, although officials elected to other positions such as
governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
did not begin acting in their official roles until later. The first two acts created by the legislature were amendments to the constitution, and they were approved by voters on April 15, 1858. One authorized a loan to railroads of
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
5 million, and the other related to the term of office of the first state officers. Amended constitutions were apparently the ones viewed by Congress during the ratification process. The validity of the early laws passed by the Legislature is somewhat in doubt, although they have never been challenged in
court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
.
Bill of rights
A
bill of rights
A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pr ...
is featured prominently in the constitution as Article I. There are currently seventeen sections, including many that echo the amendments to the
United States Constitution by subject, but not necessarily by language. The
Minnesota Supreme Court
The Minnesota Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The court hears cases in the Supreme Court chamber in the Minnesota State Capitol or in the nearby Minnesota Judicial Center.
History
The court was first assemb ...
, which has final authority over how the Bill of Rights is interpreted, has given conflicting signals about when the state Bill of Rights should be interpreted differently from the federal one.
For example, Section 3 states that "the liberty of the press shall forever remain inviolate, and all persons may freely speak, write and publish their sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of such right." The
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the ...
, by contrast, states that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Despite the affirmative protections of Section 3, the Minnesota Supreme Court has followed the majority position of most states, rejected the position of the
Supreme Court of California in the landmark case of ''
Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center'', and stubbornly refused to interpret such language any differently from the First Amendment. The court's most recent case on this issue was
State v. Wicklund', in 1999, which involved a failed attempt by fur-coat protesters to demonstrate at the privately owned but publicly financed Mall of America.
By contrast, Section 16 addresses the "freedom of conscience," or more generally freedom of religion. In the 1990 case o
State v. Hershberger which involved the Amish's successful attempt to be declared exempt from a state traffic law, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed more expansive protections for Minnesotans than the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause provides.
Although the text of Section 10 is exactly the same as the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Minnesota Supreme Court has frequently interpreted it differently, so as to provide more expansive protections for persons subject to criminal prosecution under state law. For example, in the 2003 case o
State v. Carter, the court held that a police dog's "sniff" of a rented storage locker is a "search" under the state Bill of Rights even though it is not a search under the federal Bill of Rights. In the 1994 case of Ascher v. Commissioner of Public Safety, the court held that DWI sobriety checkpoints, while constitutional under the Fourth Amendment, were unconstitutional under Article 1, Section 10.
Some of the other provisions in the Minnesota Bill of Rights are for
trial by jury
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.
Jury trials are used in a significan ...
and
due process of law.
The Legislature
Amongst other rules, the state legislature may not meet in regular session "after the first Monday following the third Saturday in May of any year." The governor may call a special session following that date to handle unresolved issues from the regular session or to deal with unforeseen events such as emergency funding following natural disasters.
Minnesota's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, so if a biennial budget isn't passed by the end of June in an odd-numbered year, the effect is a government shutdown, as happened
in 2005 and
again in 2011.
Similar to the
Tennessee State Constitution, bills brought before the legislature may deal with only one subject.
Transportation
Article XIV of the constitution is dedicated to discussing the public
highway
A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-acces ...
system of the state and the methods of funding. It authorizes a
trunk highway system overseen by the state and methods of funding roadways overseen by smaller
political division
Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...
s within Minnesota. Sections 4 and 5 in Article X also describe the
taxation of fuel and vehicles used in relation to airborne transportation, including
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...
and supplemental vehicles.
In 1920, the
Babcock Amendment authorized 70 "
constitutional route
In the U.S. state of Minnesota, a legislative route is a highway number defined by the Minnesota State Legislature. The routes from 1 to 70 are constitutional routes, defined as part of the Babcock Amendment to the Minnesota State Constitution, p ...
" (CR) highways cris-crossing the state. Until the 1974 modification of the constitution (see section below), these were enumerated in the document itself, though today they are listed in the
Minnesota Statutes (§161.114). Still, the general routes cannot be altered or removed without amending the constitution and are therefore somewhat fixed. In many cases, the constitutional route numbers do not match highway numbers. In fact, it has been common for CR highways to be composed of several different
trunk highways. When the
U.S. Highway system
The United States Numbered Highway System (often called U.S. Routes or U.S. Highways) is an integrated network of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid in the contiguous United States. As the designation and numbering of these h ...
was created in 1926, many of these roads were made up of one or more U.S. highways. Today, they now use a mix of
Minnesota state highways, U.S. highways, and
Interstate highways.
There is some ambiguity in how literally the
Minnesota Department of Transportation must interpret the constitutional routes. In some cases, the routes no longer directly serve communities they were once designated for, but are routed along nearby interstates instead.
The strong support given to automobile and aircraft transportation is often criticized by advocates of
public transportation
Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...
(
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
es,
light rail, etc.), which they believe is inappropriately funded. While highways have a consistent source of money,
Metro Transit has had to frequently petition the legislature for funding.
1974 alteration
In 1971, the legislature created a commission to study the constitution and make recommendations to maintain its utility. After reviewing the document for two years, it was recommended that the constitution be amended to rewrite it in modern language and allow easier reference. The amendment was approved by voters on November 5, 1974. This did not alter the meaning of the constitution, although if there is a case where meaning is ambiguous, the original document remains the final authority.
The earlier wording of the constitution, including all of the amendments approved since adoption in 1857, is printed in the ''Minnesota Legislative Manual 1973–74'', pages 445–484.
References
Secretary of State's Note: Minnesota State Constitution.Minnesota Secretary of State.
*Steve Riner (January 12, 2003)
The Unofficial Minnesota Highways Page.
External links
Minnesota Constitutional Convention, 1857 in MNopedia, the Minnesota Encyclopedia Amendments to Minnesota's Constitution proposed to the voters since 1858 (PDF) The Enabling Act for a State of MinnesotaMinnesota Historical Society: Minnesota's Constitution(s)
{{Constitutions of the United States
Minnesota law
State constitutions of the United States
1857 in law