According to +Jared Cohen, +Google Ideas today hosted President Marzouki of Tunisia and former President Otunbyaeva of Kyrgyzstan for the launch of Constitute.
Constitute is a new site that digitizes and makes searchable the world’s constitutions. Constitute enables people to browse and search constitutions via curated and tagged topics, as well as by country and year.
Google Ideas partnered with Comparative Constitutions Project to make this a reality. Currently Constitute has every constitution that was in force in September of 2013 for every independent state in the world. Soon it will include data and text for a version of every available constitution ever written since 1789. Other partners include the Indigo Trust, IC2, Psycle and the Miranker Lab at the University of Texas.
+Sara Sinclair Brody, Google Ideas Product Manager, in a blog post, acknowledged the critical role that the process of redesigning and drafting a new constitution can play in uniting a country, especially following periods of conflict and instability. In the past, it’s been difficult to access and compare existing constitutional documents and language—which is critical to drafters—because the texts are locked up in libraries or on the hard drives of constitutional experts. 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.
With this in mind, Constitute was built. The aim is to arm drafters with a better tool for constitution design and writing. it is also hoped that citizens will use Constitute to learn more about their own constitutions, and those of countries around the world.
