About the Project – Bail at the Founding

Bail at the Founding is a legal history project led by Profs. Kellen Funk and Sandy Mayson. Our goal is to explore and understand criminal bail law and practice in founding-era America, both to better understand the origins of today’s bail practices and to help inform the interpretation of founding-era laws that continue to govern us, like the Excessive Bail Clause in the U.S. Constitution and provisions about bail in state constitutions.

We — and our research assistants — have put in countless hours of work to identify, locate, photo-scan, transcribe, and analyze archival documents from the founding era. We want other researchers and members of the public to have easier access to them! So we’re making as many of our sources as possible available here.

Profound thanks to the wonderful research assistants, librarians, archivists, IT experts, and communications professionals who have helped us pull this together, including:

Paul Riermaier, Biddle Law Library
Hunter Whaley, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library
Joshua Blay, Philadelphia City Archives
Caitlin Conway, Penn JD candidate
Thomas Munson, Penn JD candidate
Matt Nelson, Penn JD candidate
Chase Hanson, Penn JD candidate
Sean Ross, Penn JD candidate
Sudeshna Dutta, Penn Law IT
Rebecca Anderson, Penn Law Communications
AJ Spindler, Columbia JD candidate
Katie Miklus, Columbia JD candidate
Jen Morton, Columbia JD candidate