Constitution of Oregon
governing document of the state of Oregon, enacted in 1857
The Oregon Constitution is the governing document of the U.S. state of Oregon, originally enacted in 1857. As amended the current state constitution contains eighteen Articles, beginning with a bill of rights. This contains most of the rights and privileges protected by the United States Bill of Rights and the main text of the United States Constitution. The remainder of the Oregon Constitution outlines the divisions of power within the state government, lists the times of elections, and defines the state boundaries and the capital as Salem.
History
The first constitutional documents enacted in Oregon pre-dated statehood. These were the Organic Law of 1843 and the Organic Law of 1845, adopted to govern Oregon Territory. In 1857, leaders of the territory gathered at the Oregon Constitutional Convention and drafted the current constitution. Over half of the document's content was derived in part from the Indiana constitution. The constitution of 1857 included a racial exclusion section that excluded African Americans and Chinese from the state. (See Racism in Oregon.)
On November 9, 1857, Oregon voters approved its first constitution that then became effective upon statehood on February 14, 1859.
“Constitution of Oregon” enters the record as governing document of the state of Oregon, enacted in 1857. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Constitution, Oregon and governing can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5164225. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1857, 1843, 1845 and 1859.
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This entry incorporates text from “Constitution of Oregon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.