The Montana State Constitution was written at the 1972 Constitutional Convention and adopted by a vote of the people. Nineteen of the 100 delegates were women, of whom nine were members of the League of Women Voters.
Visit the Friends of Montana Constitution website to learn more about efforts to support and maintain the 1972 state constitution.
Preamble: We the people of Montana grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations do ordain and establish this constitution.
You can show your support for Montana's Constitution by adding your name to the Declaration of Support! Here is the link: https://my.lwv.org/montana/show-your-support-our-montana-constitution
Educator Resources
New lesson plan on the Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972. Bigfork high school teacher Cynthia Wilondek spent a year creating an intensive dive into Montana’s constitutional convention. The multipart lesson first asks students to analyze and compare the preambles of both the 1889 and 1972 Montana Constitutions. Then it asks students to explore how the 1972 constitution came to be, before researching some of the major people and events of the 1972 Constitutional Convention and presenting their findings in a digital “yearbook.” While the full lesson takes eight to eleven 50-minute class periods, parts can be used independently. If you teach high school government, Montana history, or even English, consider teaching all or part of Cynthia's lesson.
Montana Constitution 50th Anniversary Videos
Montana's 1972 Constitutional Convention was a remarkable event, not the least because 19 of the 100 elected delegates were women, the largest percentage of women at a state constitutional convention in history! Montana's Constitution has been heralded as one of the most advanced constitutions in the nation.
See the videos below for more information about this amazing document, the process that brought it into being, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens in Montana.
VIDEOS