In the interest of advancing the practice of canon law, the General Convention authorized an historical commentary on the revisions to The Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons.  The first edition of this text, the Annotated Constitution and Canons for the Government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America Adopted in General Conventions 1789-1922, was published by Edwin Augustine White in 1924.

The 1937 General Convention appointed a joint commission to "codify, edit, rearrange, and renumber" the canons and revise White's work. Jackson Arman Dykman, serving on a joint committee created in 1943 to supervise the work, edited the Annotated Constitution and Canons for the Government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America Adopted in General Conventions 1789-1952, publishing it in two volumes in 1954.

A joint committee was re-authorized to extend the commission's work.  It published pocket supplements for the 1955, 1958, and 1961 General Conventions. Seabury Press published a cumulative supplement following the 1964 General Convention. 

In 1976 the General Convention adopted legislation establishing the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons, and urged that body to prepare a revised and updated version of the Annotated Constitution and Canons, which it did in 1981.  This was updated with the 1989 and 1991 supplements and was reprinted in 1997.  In 2006 the General Convention amended the canons to assign responsibility for updating the Annotated Constitution and Canons to the Standing Commission.