Oklahoma State Constitution

de Danny M. Adkison, Lisa McNair Palmer

""The best constitution in the United States today." That is how William Jennings Bryan described the proposed constitution for Oklahoma in 1907. Bryan was clearly engaging in hyperbole, but he was signifying that the drafters of Oklahoma's constitution were guided in the main by many of the concerns which were highlighted during what historians came to dub the Progressive Era.Although the Progressive mentality did not win every victory (Oklahoma's constitution did not then and does not now include a provision for the recall), Progressives were, in general, pleased with the document. In particular, they praised the provision for the initiative and the referendum. Perhaps they did not anticipate that the initiative provision would, by the end of the 1900s, be used over 140 times to amend the very document they had drafted.One reason for the numerous amendments is the fact that so many details were included in the original document (about 50,000 words in length when finished in 1907). Many of these details would quickly become outdated or obsolete, and thus in need of amending. This attention to detail was not just a product of numerous interests seeking to have their favorite provision included in the constitution, but a fear of the drafters that they would not be able to trust the state legislature created by the new constitution to take the interests of the mass of Oklahoma citizens into account when enacting laws. An enduring characteristic of Oklahoma's constitution, however, has been its faith in direct democracy. In 2018 alone, Oklahomans had the opportunity to vote on six provisions to modify state laws or the state's constitution. These included issues that ranged from a state law legalizing medical marijuana (which passed) to amending the state's constitution to allow optometrists to operate in Wal-Mart stores (which did not pass).This volume traces the historical formation and constitutional development of the state. This development, given the frequency with which Oklahomans deem it necessary to change, is literally an ongoing process"--