A big, happy 50th birthday to the Illinois Constitution

Law and Public Issues

By Ann M. Lousin

Ann M. Lousin has been a professor at UIC John Marshall Law School since 1975. Before then, she was a research assistant at the 1969-1970 Illinois constitutional convention and parliamentarian of the Illinois House of Representatives. Her treatise “The Illinois State Constitution: A Reference Guide” was published in December 2009. She can be contacted at alousin@uic.edu.

Posted July 1, 2021 11:28 AM

Today, July 1 is the 50th anniversary of the effective date of the 1970 Illinois Constitution. Our basic charter has arrived at middle age.On the evening of June 30, 1971, the General Assembly was in session, as it always was on June 30th of odd-numbered years. But for the first time, nobody held back the clock. For a 100 years, the legislature had met on “June 30th” and passed bills by that old constitutional deadline, but in fact the date of June 30th also applied to the next few days. Before 1971, the legislature …

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