B.1 — Origins
The genesis of ReDrafting America traces back to a 2017 message addressed by the Founder to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, written in response to the political climate of that year. The later publication of Project 2025 by The Heritage Foundation underscored the urgent need for a democratic, ethical, and forward-looking counter-vision, and turned that early conviction into this organization.
Development of Constitution v2.0 began in 2024, followed by website development in 2025. The organization’s formal Bylaws were drafted in 2026 as both an internal governance framework and a living example of ethical constitutional design. That design is grounded in public access, AI governance, and universal human dignity. It is informed by the principles found in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These Bylaws were architected and authored by Todd McGuckin, Founder of ReDrafting America, as part of a larger constitutional initiative. That initiative seeks to reform governance, restore civic trust, and realign democratic institutions with the moral and technological realities of the 21st century. He wrote the first draft alone so that the document it produces will not be.
B.2 — Foundational References
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings.
It was drafted by a United Nations committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. The General Assembly accepted it as Resolution 217 during its third session on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. Of the 58 members of the United Nations at the time, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote.
A foundational text in the history of human and civil rights, the Declaration consists of 30 articles. They detail an individual’s “basic rights and fundamental freedoms” and affirm their universal character as inherent, inalienable, and applicable to all human beings. The UDHR was adopted as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”. It commits nations to recognize all humans as being “born free and equal in dignity and rights”. That is regardless of “nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status.”
The Declaration is generally considered to be a milestone document for its universalist language. That language makes no reference to a particular culture, political system, or religion. It directly inspired the development of international human rights law. It was the first step in the formulation of the International Bill of Human Rights. That Bill was completed in 1966 and came into force in 1976.
Although not legally binding, the contents of the UDHR have been elaborated and incorporated into subsequent international treaties and regional human rights instruments. They have been incorporated into national constitutions and legal codes. All 193 member states of the United Nations have ratified at least one of the nine binding treaties influenced by the Declaration. The vast majority have ratified four or more.
There is a consensus that the declaration itself is nonbinding and not part of customary international law. There is also a consensus in most countries that many of its provisions are part of customary law. Courts in some nations have been more restrictive on its legal effect. Nevertheless, the UDHR has influenced legal, political, and social developments on both the global and national levels. Its significance is partly evidenced by its 530 translations.
ReDrafting America affirms the UDHR as its guiding moral charter. It incorporates the UDHR’s principles into all constitutional and educational frameworks.
📎 Reference: United Nations — Universal Declaration of Human Rights
B.3 — Contributions and Advisors
The following individuals, institutions, frameworks, publications, and technologies contributed to the structure, refinement, research, or conceptual integrity of this document. Their contributions came through authorship, consultation, historical influence, investigative journalism, or technical assistance. The table is ordered by significance rather than alphabetically: the Founder and the two foundational sources first, then Government, Civic, Policy, Public Education, Think Tank, and AI contributors, alphabetical within each group.
CONTRIBUTOR | CATEGORY | CONTRIBUTION |
|---|---|---|
Todd McGuckin, Founder | Founder | Author of these Bylaws and of the original Constitution v2.0; architect of the constitutional framework the Nonprofit exists to advance. |
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) | Foundational Document | Served as the moral foundation and philosophical compass for the ethical principles, governance philosophy, and human rights framework incorporated throughout these Bylaws and Constitution v2.0. |
Five-Power Constitution (Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, 1906) | Historical / Structural Influence | Provided the structural inspiration for ReDrafting America’s Five-Branch model of government: Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Education, and Oversight. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s original fifth branch was named Examination; ReDrafting America expanded that concept and renamed it Education. |
Government | The nation’s largest repository of legal, legislative, and historical scholarship. Its collections and research services informed the historical and comparative constitutional research underlying Constitution v2.0. | |
Government | Permanent steward of the original Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights, and of the federal government’s enduring legal and historical record. Its custody of the nation’s founding documents underscores why any serious constitutional reform effort, including Constitution v2.0, must be grounded in the actual historical and legal record rather than abstraction. | |
Government | Steward of the nation’s museums and the public’s shared memory of its history. Its model of turning preserved records into public understanding inspired the distinction between The Museum and The Archive. | |
Civic | A national leader in primary-source constitutional education whose nonpartisan, founding-document-centered approach to civic literacy parallels ReDrafting America’s own commitment to grounding reform in first principles rather than partisanship. | |
Civic | Through its Convention of States Project, provided a well-developed procedural and legal framework for invoking Article V of the U.S. Constitution, including model state resolutions, delegate apportionment approaches, and convention-rules scholarship. Its work helped inform ReDrafting America’s thinking on convention mechanics, delegate credentialing, and the procedural safeguards a lawful Article V process requires. | |
Civic | Founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the nation’s most widely used civic education platform. Its work advancing informed civic participation reflects the same educational mission ReDrafting America pursues through Constitution v2.0 and its companion materials. | |
Civic | America’s leading platform for nonpartisan constitutional education, whose Constitution Drafting Project — convening libertarian, progressive, and conservative teams of scholars to draft competing constitutions — stands as the closest national analog to the cross-ideological, evidence-based approach ReDrafting America has tried to bring to Constitution v2.0. | |
Policy | Publisher of the nation’s most widely cited annual survey of public constitutional knowledge. Its research on the state of American civic literacy helped inform the educational urgency behind ReDrafting America’s mission. | |
Policy | Nonprofit board governance reference. BoardSource guidance on board structure, roles, committees, and accountability was consulted repeatedly to resolve governance questions during the drafting of these Bylaws. | |
Policy | A leading nonpartisan voice on structural democracy and governance reform, whose research and advocacy on the mechanics of American government paralleled and informed the structural reform questions Constitution v2.0 attempts to answer. | |
Policy | The nation’s oldest cross-partisan organization devoted to improving the structure and performance of American government, founded in 1894. Its long history of work on governmental efficiency and accountability informed the design principles behind Constitution v2.0’s Five-Branch model. | |
Public Education | Through more than a decade of award-winning investigative journalism and public policy analysis, John Oliver and his team of researchers helped illuminate numerous systemic failures within American government, law, economics, and public administration. While the constitutional solutions proposed by Constitution v2.0 are original to ReDrafting America, Last Week Tonight served as an invaluable public education resource and recurring research reference, helping identify institutional weaknesses, ethical failures, and governance challenges requiring structural reform. Throughout the development of Constitution v2.0, the series functioned as an informal “checklist” of real-world problems to be studied, independently researched, and addressed through durable constitutional solutions. | |
Think Tank | One of the nation’s most widely cited think tanks on governance and public policy. Paired with the Cato Institute below, its inclusion reflects the same cross-ideological principle that shaped the National Constitution Center’s own Drafting Project. | |
Think Tank | A participating institution in the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project, representing the libertarian constitutional tradition. Its inclusion here reflects ReDrafting America’s commitment to engaging seriously with constitutional perspectives across the ideological spectrum rather than from within a single one. | |
AI | AI Constitutional Drafting and Document Engineering Framework. Assisted with structural drafting and revision, legal and coherence audits, terminology and cross-reference consistency, formatting standardization, and document integrity and version control. | |
AI | General analysis, fit and finish | |
AI | AI Constitutional Advisory Framework. Assisted with initial drafting, diagrams, figures, tables, Pennsylvania nonprofit research, and finalization. |
This Section may be expanded in future versions to acknowledge additional contributors, advisors, researchers, institutions, technologies, or historical influences that materially contribute to the ongoing evolution of ReDrafting America and Constitution v2.0.
End of Appendix B. Return to the TOC