Who drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted in 1776?

George Mason drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted in 1776.

The Virginia Convention approved the declaration on June 12, 1776, shortly before the Declaration of Independence. Mason’s text proclaimed that people possessed inherent rights and that government existed to serve the public rather than rule by arbitrary authority.

The declaration influenced later American political writing. Its language about equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, freedom of the press, and religious freedom helped shape Virginia’s constitution and contributed ideas later reflected in the United States Bill of Rights.

George Mason did not sign the U.S. Constitution because he objected to its lack of a bill of rights and to other features of the proposed federal system. Thomas Jefferson drew on several ideas from the Virginia declaration when drafting the Declaration of Independence, but Jefferson was not its author. The two documents are related yet distinct.