united-states us-constitution
What is the authoritative version of the Constitution?
<p>Is there a single authoritative copy of the Constitution, i.e. if it contradicted every other copy, it would prevail in a court? For the original articles, the original copy would be the obvious choice, but it doesn't include amendments.</p>

<p>The <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Constitution of the United States: Analysis and Interpretation</em></a>, also called the &quot;Constitution Annotated&quot;, is <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/intro-1-1/ALDE_00000027/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the constitution of record</a>:</p>
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<p>the only constitutional law treatise formally authorized by federal law, the Constitution Annotated functions as the official Constitution of record</p>
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<p>What version is authoritative can be meaningful. See William W. Van Alstyne, &quot;<a href="https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2167&amp;context=facpubs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">A Constitutional Conundrum of Second
Amendment Commas</a>&quot;.</p>
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<p>And although phoog and I have provided different answers, I think we are both correct. The text as shown in the Constitution Annotated is what is universally accepted as the version to quote from in judicial submissions and reasons. But it's <em>because</em> it has drawn from the version in phoog's answer. Basically, the document in the archives is authoritative, but there is no need for writers and judges to go look at that when they are quoting, because the Constitution Annotated is deemed to have replicated that content faithfully.</p>

<p>The authoritative copies of the constitution and of amendments are held at the national archives.  For example, consider the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/106b" rel="nofollow noreferrer">amendment process</a>:</p>
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<p>Whenever official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration that any amendment proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published, with his certificate, specifying the States by which the same may have been adopted, and that the same has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States.</p>
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<p>There's no explicit provision for errors of publication.</p>

<p>There is no authoritative version, until SCOTUS says there is (and which one it is).
And it depends on what you mean by “authoritative”. I would suppose you mean, what version would the Supreme Court rely on in a case or controversy before them, where there was an actual dispute as to the content (not interpretation) of the Constitution because there are competing texts. As others have noted, there is a document identified by act of Congress in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/168" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2 USC 168</a> as Senate Document Numbered 39, Eighty-eighth Congress
referred to in the law as the &quot;Constitution Annotated&quot;. However, the Constitution itself does not answer the question, nor does the does the Constitution explicitly assign the power to determine authoritativeness to the judicial, legislative or executive branches. The judiciary clearly has the power to say what the Constitution and laws mean and to determine is a law is unconstitutional, and Congress does not have that power. So Congress does not have to power to define for the judiciary what the Constitution is or says, and the judiciary has not definitely answered the question.</p>
<p>The existence of competing versions is not an empty hypothetical, since the text of the Second Amendment was not uniform: the versions ratified by the state were not all identical to the version passed by Congress (in what seem to be trivial ways, but the number of comas is not a triviality). There are a number of historical “version” questions that could be raised, discussed <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/fall/const-errors.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>
though none seem to have the potential for creating a constitutional crisis.</p>
