The US Constitution runs about 7,591 words in total, and reading it end to end takes roughly 30 to 35 minutes at an average pace.1GovInfo. The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation That makes it the shortest written national constitution among major world governments and the longest-surviving one still in force.2U.S. Senate. Constitution Day
The Word Count, Broken Down
The Government Publishing Office’s annotated edition rounds the total to “roughly 7,500 words,” while more granular counts land at 7,591.1GovInfo. The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation The gap comes down to what you count. The title, the attestation clause, and the names of the 39 delegates who signed can be included or excluded, and different editions handle them differently.3National Archives. Meet the Framers of the Constitution
The original 1787 document, before any amendments, was about 4,400 words. The remaining roughly 3,100 words come from the 27 amendments ratified between 1791 and 1992.
Individual amendments vary widely. The Eighth Amendment is the shortest at around 16 words, banning excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment. The Fourteenth is the longest at over 400 words across five sections covering citizenship, due process, equal protection, and apportionment. The first ten amendments, ratified together as the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, account for a large share of the amendment total.4National Archives. The Bill of Rights: A Transcription
How Long It Takes to Read
Research across nearly 200 studies puts the average adult silent reading speed for nonfiction at about 238 words per minute. At that pace, the full text from the Preamble through the Twenty-Seventh Amendment takes roughly 32 minutes. Slow down to a careful 200 words per minute and you still finish in under 40. Read aloud, expect closer to an hour.
Understanding it is a different matter. Readability analyses consistently place the text at a college reading level, with one study scoring Article II, Section 1 at a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 14.1, equivalent to a college sophomore. The 18th-century sentence structures, legal phrasing, and abstract concepts like “due process” and “equal protection” mean the word count understates how much time close reading actually takes.
How It Compares to Other Documents
By world standards, the US Constitution is remarkably short. India’s constitution, generally considered the longest in the world, runs over 100,000 words across more than 400 articles. Most other major democracies fall somewhere in between, and few come close to the American document’s brevity.
It is also far shorter than every state constitution in the country. The average state constitution is about 39,000 words, more than five times the federal document. Some, like Alabama’s, exceed 300,000 words. State constitutions tend to be longer because they spell out specific policy details that the federal Constitution leaves to legislation and court interpretation.
Among the country’s other founding documents, the Declaration of Independence contains roughly 1,320 words from its opening line through “our sacred honor,” or 1,458 if you include the title and the names of the 56 signers. The Constitution packs about five times as much text into a document built to do something different: not declare principles, but assemble a working government.
The Physical Document
If you mean physical length rather than word count, the original Constitution was handwritten on four sheets of parchment, each measuring about 28¾ by 23⅝ inches. All four pages are on permanent display at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., sealed in argon-filled encasements to slow deterioration.5National Archives. The Constitution of the United States Printed in a standard modern pocket edition with the Declaration of Independence included, the whole thing typically fits in about 30 to 50 small pages.