Why Constitute?

New constitutions are written every year. The people who write these important documents need to read and analyze texts from other places. Constitute offers access to the world’s constitutions that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using a modern, clean interface.

How to use Constitute?

Constitute allows you to interact with the world’s constitutions in a few different ways.

• Quickly find relevant passages. The Comparative Constitutions Project has tagged passages of each constitution with a topic — e.g., “right to privacy” or “equality regardless of gender” — so you can quickly find relevant excerpts on a particular subject, no matter how they are worded. You can browse the 300+ topics in the expandable drawer on the left of the page, or see suggested topics while typing in the search bar (which also lets you perform free-text queries).
• Filter searches. Want to view results for a specific region or time period? You can limit your search by country or by date using the buttons under the search bar.
• Save for further analysis. To download or print excerpts from multiple constitutions, click the “pin” button next to each expanded passage you want to save. You can then view and download your pinned excerpts in the drawer on the right.

Use of Data

Except for material identified as copyrighted by other parties, the content of constituteproject.org is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (which allows you to make free use of information from the site for noncommercial purposes). William S. Hein and Company and the Oxford University Press have provided certain materials from their online collections of constitutional texts. We encourage interested users to explore their products at HeinOnline and Oxford Constitutions of the World. The data that power the site are architected and maintained according to principles of the semantic web and available for download here. For more information on these data and other ways to interact with it, visit the website of the Comparative Constitutions Project.

See something that looks wrong?

Let us know if you find problems with a constitution or one of its excerpts. Each passage has an error icon which you can click to tell us when it is miscategoriezed or displayed incorrectly. You may also send general concerns by email to [email protected]. We are obsessed with beautiful and reliable constitution data, and welcome your feedback.

Which constitutions are represented in Constitute?

Currently Constitute includes the constitution that was in force in September of 2013 for nearly every independent state in the world. Certain countries whose constitutional order consists of multiple documents, or whose constitutions are in transition, are temporarily omitted. Soon we will include many of these cases as well as a version of every available constitution ever written since 1789.

Who is behind Constitute?

Constitute was developed by the Comparative Constitutions Project. It was seeded with a grant from Google Ideas to the University of Texas at Austin, with additional financial support from the Indigo Trust and IC2. Semantic data structures were created by the Miranker Lab at the University of Texas using Capsenta's Ultrawrap. Site architecture, engineering, and design are provided by Psycle Interactive.

The following organizations have made important investments in the Comparative Constitutions Project since 2005: the National Science Foundation (SES 0648288, IIS 1018554), the Cline Center for Democracy, the United States Institute of Peace, the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, and the Constitution Unit at University College London.

Any inquiries should be addressed to [email protected]