Massachusetts State Government Overview

The 1780 Constitution

Massachusetts wrote its constitution before the country did. John Adams drafted it, the towns voted on it, and it took effect in 1780. Seven years later the framers in Philadelphia built the federal government on the same architecture: one executive, a legislature in two chambers, and courts kept separate from both. The Massachusetts document never stopped working, which is why it is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

It opens with a Declaration of Rights, and parts of it are startlingly blunt for a document this old. Article XIX says the people may assemble peaceably, give instructions to their representatives, and ask the Legislature in writing to fix what is wrong. That is the legal root of every bill a resident has ever talked a legislator into filing. Article XXIX says judges should be “as free, impartial, and independent as the lot of humanity will admit,” which is the argument behind appointing judges rather than electing them.

The original text is not the whole story. Amendments carry a lot of the modern machinery: the ten days a Governor has to act on a bill, the eight member Governor’s Council, and the rule that a new law waits 90 days before it takes effect unless it declares an emergency and says why.

• The Massachusetts Constitution. The full text, including the Declaration of Rights.
• John Adams and the Constitution. A mass.gov guide to how the 1780 document was written.

The Six Statewide Offices

Six offices are elected by the whole state rather than by a district, each for a four year term, and every one of them is on the ballot in November 2026. They are not a chain of command. The Attorney General does not answer to the Governor, and the Auditor’s entire job is to examine how state money was spent, including money spent by agencies the Governor runs. That independence is deliberate.

• Governor, Maura Healey. Leads the executive branch and acts on every bill the Legislature passes.
• Lieutenant Governor, Kim Driscoll. Serves alongside the Governor and steps in if the Governor cannot serve.
• Attorney General, Andrea Joy Campbell. The Commonwealth’s chief lawyer.
• Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Francis Galvin. Runs elections and keeps the public records of the state.
• Treasurer and Receiver General, Deborah B. Goldberg. Holds and invests the Commonwealth’s money.
• Auditor, Diana DiZoglio. Examines how state agencies spend public money and publishes what she finds.

• The official roster. All six current officeholders, published by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
• Every elected office in Massachusetts, its term, and the years it appears on your ballot.

Legislative Branch

The Massachusetts Legislature is called the General Court, a name that confuses nearly everyone: it is a legislature, not a court. It has two chambers, the Senate with 40 seats and the House of Representatives with 160, and every seat carries a two year term. The session sitting now is the 194th General Court, led by Senate President Karen E. Spilka and House Speaker Ronald Mariano.

Massachusetts runs its committees differently from most states. Instead of a House committee and then a separate Senate committee, bills go to joint committees where senators and representatives sit together and hold one public hearing. Under the rules, every matter referred to a joint standing committee gets a hearing, and the video is archived. The Legislature also sets itself a clock: all formal business of the second year of a session ends on the last day of July, which for this session means July 2026.

• Overview of the Legislative Branch
• Massachusetts General Court Website
• Find Your Local Representative

Judicial Branch

The Supreme Judicial Court was established in 1692 and is the oldest appellate court in continuous existence in the Western Hemisphere. Its first sitting, on January 3, 1693 in Salem, took up the cases left over from the witch trials. The new court refused to accept spectral evidence, the testimony that an accused person had appeared to someone as an apparition. It heard the cases of 26 people accused of witchcraft and found 23 of them not guilty; the other three were later pardoned by the Governor. That is the beginning of the rules of evidence in Massachusetts, and it started with a court deciding what it would not listen to.

Today the SJC has seven justices, a Chief Justice and six Associates, currently led by Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd. The Governor appoints them and the Governor’s Council has to approve, and once seated they serve until the mandatory retirement age of 70. Below the SJC sits the Appeals Court, created in 1972 to handle the growing stack of appeals, and below that the Trial Court, where nearly every case in the state actually begins. The Trial Court is organized into seven departments: District Court, Boston Municipal Court, Housing Court, Juvenile Court, Land Court, Probate and Family Court, and Superior Court. If a case in your life ever touches a courtroom, it almost certainly starts in one of those seven.

• Overview of the Judicial Branch
• Massachusetts Court System Website
• About the Supreme Judicial Court

Boards, Commissions, and Departments

Most of what state government does day to day is not done by the six statewide officers or the 200 legislators. It is done by agencies, boards, and commissions staffed by people nobody elected: the department that permits a new athletic field, the board that licenses the person who cuts your hair, the commission that decides what a utility may charge your family for electricity. They get their authority from laws the Legislature passed, and most of them hold public meetings and take public comment, which makes them one of the easier doors to walk through.

• Explore State Agencies

Education

Public education in Massachusetts is overseen by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, known as DESE, which sets standards and accountability for roughly 400 school districts serving close to one million students. Your own district is governed by an elected school committee and run by a superintendent it hires. That split matters: the school committee is a group of your neighbors you can vote for and speak to at a public meeting, while the superintendent is an employee it selects. State law and the state budget set the floor, and the Legislature writes both. In 2026 the General Court passed an act on teacher preparation and student literacy that changes how reading curricula and instructional materials get reviewed.

• Overview of Massachusetts Education
• The DESE website. Standards, accountability, and data for every district.

Local Government

Massachusetts has 351 cities and towns, and the city or town is where the decisions closest to you get made. County government barely figures here: only five counties still elect county commissioners at all. Select boards, city councils, school committees, and mayors set the property tax rate, hire the police chief, decide which street gets repaved, and vote on your school’s budget. These are also the smallest electorates in the state, which is exactly why a single vote or a single person speaking at a meeting carries more weight here than anywhere else on this page.

Local and state are not separate worlds. A Massachusetts town’s charter is a state law with a chapter number: in 2026 alone the Legislature enacted a new charter for the town of Orange, gave Berkley the power to recall its elected officials, and changed the name of Boylston’s Board of Selectmen to Select Board. When your town wants to change how it governs itself, it usually has to ask Beacon Hill.

• Overview of Local Government
• Find Your City or Town Website
• Find Your Local Representatives