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The Virginia Declaration of Rights at 250

The Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted unanimously by Virginia’s Fifth Convention on June 12, 1776, is a seminal, post-colonial state paper affirming republican principles, limited government, and humankind’s natural rights. It is arguably the most imitated of America’s founding documents. Indeed, it is one of the most influential texts in the American constitutional tradition. Often described as the first modern declaration or bill of rights in America, it is a distillation of the great principles of liberty and constitutionalism that revolutionary Americans believed were derived from English traditions and, more generally, western culture. The Virginia Declaration informed not only core principles of the US Declaration of Independence (1776) but also the language and content of numerous subsequent bills of rights in the respective states and nation. It also made profound innovations to the way Americans viewed religious liberty.