Pocket Constitution

Throughout our 96-year history, the Constitution has guided so much of what we do at the ACLU — we strive to help people understand and care about our founding document and show how it’s relevant in our everyday lives. And suddenly, during this year’s election cycle, the Constitution ended up being an especially hot topic.

After Khizr Khan’s speech urging Donald Trump to read the Constitution, we decided to offer our pocket Constitutions free of charge from ACLU’s online store. We received a more enthusiastic response than we ever could have imagined, with over 100,000 copies ordered in the span of a few days! Thanks to this unprecedented demand, we are officially sold out of pocket Constitutions.

We’re thrilled to discover so many fellow Constitution nerds. Here are some numbers from this impromptu campaign that, with your help, clearly showed our founding document is as relevant to people today as it was 226 years ago:

• Over 100,000 copies of the Constitution were ordered from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa (plus 27 other countries!)
• We received more than 2,500 donations from people who ordered a free copy
• Almost 30,000 new people have joined our email list since Friday, and we've had 2.6 million website views
• We received media coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, PBS Newshour, Fusion, Intercept, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Nation, Politico, the Stranger and many more
• More than 2 million people saw our Facebook and Twitter posts, with folks like Justine Bateman, Andy Richter, Rob Reiner, attorney and author Rabia Chaudry, Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong), Wonkette founder Ana Marie Cox, and ACLU client Edward Snowden helping get the word out

We’re thrilled by the excitement level for the pocket Constitution and hope that the 100,000 additional copies now in circulation are put to good use by everyday Americans and officials alike. We also hope you’ll join us and give it a read every so often.