Pennsylvania Council of Censors

The Pennsylvania Council of Censors was charged with examining whether Pennsylvania’s constitution had been preserved and whether the legislative and executive branches had stayed within their assigned powers. Its 1783–1784 proceedings became a test of a proposed safeguard: the Council exposed constitutional breaches, but its composition, partisan conflict, and inability to make its conclusions effective also showed why periodic review could not reliably restrain government.

Mandate and constitutional review

One part of the Council’s constitutional duty was to inquire whether the constitution had been preserved inviolate and whether the legislative and executive branches had performed their duties as guardians of the people or assumed powers beyond their entitlement. Carrying out that charge required comparing the branches’ actions with the powers the constitution assigned them. The review therefore treated constitutional limits not merely as declarations, but as standards against which actual government conduct could be examined.

The Council’s inquiry found that the legislature had violated the constitution in a variety of important instances. Among the cited examples were laws passed without the required prior printing of public bills for the people’s consideration. That requirement was one of the constitution’s principal precautions against improper legislation. The example gives the Council’s work a concrete subject: the question was not only whether the branches had formally distinct powers, but whether a procedural safeguard intended to expose proposed laws to public scrutiny had been disregarded.

Composition and partisan division

The Council’s membership complicated its role as an independent reviewer. Some of its most active members had also been leading figures in the parties that already existed in Pennsylvania. The overlap extended into the government under examination: members had recently served in the legislative and executive branches, and some had supported or opposed the very measures the Council was asked to judge. Two had been vice-presidents of the state, several had served on the executive council, and one had been speaker of the legislative assembly; other members had also been prominent legislators.

The proceedings, as described in the argument, repeatedly displayed the effect of these political attachments. The Council was divided into two fixed and intense parties, a condition its own members acknowledged and regretted. On questions that were sometimes unimportant or unrelated, the same names appeared consistently on opposing sides. The pattern suggested that shared political passion, rather than cool consideration of distinct questions, had shaped deliberation. The difficulty was structural: a body asked to judge earlier government action could include people who had participated in that action or belonged to the parties organized around it.

Findings and limits of the remedy

The Council’s decisions did not necessarily settle the constitutional meaning of the boundaries it reviewed. The account allows that, in several instances, the body may have misconstrued the limits of the legislative and executive branches rather than restored them to their proper places. Nor did the Council’s constitutional judgments appear to change the practice established by legislative interpretations. In at least one instance, the legislature rejected the Council’s interpretation and prevailed in the dispute.

These limits shaped the Council’s significance as an experiment in constitutional enforcement. Its research demonstrated that constitutional violations had occurred; its operation also showed the weakness of the proposed remedy. A reviewer divided by party, potentially implicated in the measures under review, and unable to ensure that its decisions altered government practice could identify the disease without curing it. The Council thus stood as both evidence that formal constitutional restraints could be breached and a warning that periodic political scrutiny, by itself, might not make those restraints effective.