How BYU history students trace the debates that shaped constitutional documents.
This week BYU observes Constitution Week (September 17–23), a time to look beyond the U.S. Constitution’s familiar text and consider the complex people, debates, and compromises that shaped it. This year, students in BYU’s History Department joined an initiative called the Quill Project to help do just that.
The Quill Project
In 2015, a partnership between Pembroke College at Oxford University and Utah Valley University’s Center for Constitutional Studies launched the Quill Project to study the evolution of negotiated texts such as constitutions, declarations, and peace treaties. The project builds a searchable database of the people, documents, procedures, and decisions that influenced the formation of these documents. The goal is to help people understand how studying the complexities of debate and negotiation in drafting essential texts can provide valuable lessons about resolving conflicts and achieving compromise in the pursuit of a common goal.
After documenting the origins of the U.S. Constitution, the project has expanded to cataloguing the constitutions of each of the 50 states. As the Quill Project expands, so does the need for more researchers. This is how BYU got involved.
BYU and Quill
BYU history professor Spencer Fluhman learned about the Quill Project when he served as a senior research associate at the University of Oxford from 2023 to 2024. While there, he met Nicholas Cole, a senior research fellow specializing in American legal history at Pembroke College and the project’s founder. As they discussed the project, Fluhman was struck by the project’s ambitious effort to preserve the documents that played a key role in the formation of the United States. Recognizing BYU’s potential, Cole invited Fluhman and a team of undergraduate students to join the initiative.
Starting in January 2026, four BYU students began working at the Center for Constitutional Studies at UVU to collaborate on the Quill Project virtually with Pembroke. BYU history majors Jackson Brophy, Spencer Haddock, and Hayden Toone, along with history minor Natalie Fernsten, remotely research and gather the original documents of the state constitutions of Indiana and Nevada.
Fluhman, who now serves as chair of BYU’s history department, explains that students working on the Quill Project make digital “maps” of the deliberations behind important documents like constitutions or treaties. “The project displays for scholars, judges, and other researchers the complex processes involved in the making of significant negotiated texts,” he says.
Brophy says that the Quill Project has allowed him to gain a better knowledge of the intricacies of the debates around U.S. state constitutions. "We're looking at very detailed texts, how they're amended, how they're changing, and then how they ultimately turn into constitutional documents that are endlessly significant for our modern frames of government,” he says.
Through specialized software, the students uploaded their findings into what Haddock describes as an interactive archival website. "We're tracking down all these sources and these documents, then we're scanning, uploading, transcribing, and editing them," he explains. The project aims to create a digital space where state constitutional data will become interactive, educational, and easily accessible to everyone.
Toone references an analogy to describe the project’s nuance. “If you zoom in on a sheet of music, each note has its moment. But if you zoom out, it's a beautiful song.” He explains that the idea behind the Quill Project is to highlight the individual and consequential moments of every negotiation.
An Adventure Across the Atlantic
This summer, coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary, the students, accompanied by faculty mentors Fluhman and Tyson Reeder, assistant professor of history at BYU, had the opportunity to expand their research at the Quill Project Research Center at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Traveling to England to study America’s founding document may seem odd, but it’s worth remembering that the U.S. Constitution stems from early British politics. Encountering this paradox in person made each student’s time in England deeply meaningful. “Being able to go to Oxford just helped me to better understand the context of American constitutionalism that provides the framework to work on the Quill Project,” says Brophy.
As they visited Windsor Castle and toured the British Houses of Parliament, the students also got a sense of the convergence between foundational British policies and the Quill Project. Fluhman believes that the students’ research was enhanced as they came to have a better sense of the historical background for the documents with which they worked. “This is learning outside the classroom that elevates, amplifies, and magnifies what you're learning in the classroom,” he explains.
Throughout the study abroad, Quill Project student teams from across the country had the opportunity to gather in seminars directed by passionate faculty. The students dissected documents such as the Federalist Papers and James Madison’s notes, digging into the details of constitutional formation.
Not only did the students analyze foundational documents, but they also stepped onto the debate floor. A main component of the Quill Project is to model the debates and procedures of the Constitutional Convention. After agreeing on rules of engagement, the students debated the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. "This was a different sort of training that they're not typically getting. They're having to learn parliamentary procedure and learn the rules of engagement with parliamentary debate,” says Fluhman. “It was a really interesting way of putting into practice the kinds of things they were learning theoretically.” The BYU scholars left England with a newfound gratitude toward those who debated in sweaty rooms to build a nation.
In the afternoons following the debate and seminars, the scholars would take what they had learned and apply it to the Quill Project. Every experience, lecture, and activity at Pembroke amplified their research and elevated the quality of their work. Fernsten explains that the students received training from the same Oxford editors they had worked with virtually for months. “Getting to work on our state assignments with them in person was invaluable to our future work with Quill.”
The Impact Beyond the Classroom
The hands-on learning provided by the Quill Project allowed them to deepen their understanding of constitutional history and gave them invaluable experience in their major and career fields.
When asked how the Quill Project and study abroad impacted the students, Fluhman remarked that it expanded their world, giving them a sense of how the ideas with which they engage play out in a larger context. “Our students who went were used to studying American history within the context of American history, but they started to see it in the context of world history,” he says.
The Quill Project also gave these BYU students the chance to create valuable networks. From professors, to editors, to fellow students from all over the country, these BYU scholars developed relationships that will enrich their lives for years to come. Working on the Quill Project helped BYU students understand how essential negotiation and compromise are in achieving a common goal.