As Americans, we understand just how important a constitution is to maintaining a sovereign nation. One of the basic steps toward drafting a constitution is looking at other documents and precedents. Constitute, an online database of the world’s constitutions, now provides a way to quickly search and analyze the world’s constitutions.
Did you know that each year approximately five new constitutions are written, and another 20-30 are amended or revised? Of all the world’s constitutions, Africa has the youngest sets where 19 of the 39 have been written since 2000.
Constitute: Search the World’s Constitutions
The process of creating or redesinging a new constitution can be a daunting yet critical task toward uniting a country, especially after long periods of conflict or instability. Previously, it was difficult for drafters to access the texts of others’ constitutions to use as examples because the constitutions were often locked up in libraries or other government storage facilities. The Comparative Constitutions Project has been put together in conjunction with Google Ideas to help improve this process.
Constitute enables people to browse and search constitutions by topic, country and year. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to know about women’s rights in African constitutions after the year 1945. With Constitute, now you can do that with just a few clicks.
Google on the mission of Constitute:
Although the process of drafting constitutions has evolved from chisels and stone tablets to pens and modern computers, there has been little innovation in how their content is sourced and referenced.
Our aim is to arm drafters with a better tool for constitution design and writing. We also hope citizens will use Constitute to learn more about their own constitutions, and those of countries around the world.”
