The Constitution of any country, outlines how the government and its various authorities run the state. Over time, many new laws find their place in the constitution, as well as some existing ones go through amendments and revisions. And these changes in the constitution can very well affect us, the citizens. Yet, after being so critically important, the content as well as their references are rarely to be found easily.
Constitutions of the World
To make things better for both citizens as well as the drafters, Google Idea has seed-funded the Comparative Constitutions Project to build Constitute, a project which has made constitutions of about 180 countries digitally available on the web. The content is search friendly and offers you to categorize the results by country and year. In addition, you can also check the revisions that have been made to the constitution.
Constitute also allows you to compare your constitution to some other countries’ constitution on several aspects such as “Foreign Policy” and “Judicial Autonomy and Power.”
The site offers very intuitive ways to filter and select nations. The constitution can then be easily viewed on the browser, or downloaded as a PDF file.
“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.”, said Sinclair Brody, the Product Manager at Google Ideas in a post on Google blog.
Technology has finally ringed its impact on the previously locked documents. This initiative could make the government and their citizens more aware of the outdoor world, and ultimately everyone would have a better sense of ownership.
