The
U.S. Institute of Peace and the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) are
pleased to announce the launch of constitutionmaking.org,
a site intended to provide people engaged in constitutional drafting access
to essential materials, insights, and expertise. Given your experience and
interest in constitution drafting, we would like to invite you to take
advantage of this useful resource.
Constitutionmaking.org
was created by a team of scholars and drafters with the guiding principle
that those writing constitutions should have access to (1) a variety of
options for constitutional design and (2) analysis of the consequences of
design choices. To this end, the site features three basic components:
- OPTION REPORTS.
This section includes a series of reports on a wide-ranging set of
topics that are central to historical and contemporary constitutions.
These reports provide sample provisions and information on trends
and patterns in the use of different constitutional provisions.
The data and analysis for these reports come from an original set
of data on the content of constitutions that the researchers have been
collecting since 2005. - CONSTITUTONAL
REPOSITORY. The site also includes a
growing repository of constitutional texts. The researchers have
identified the major constitutional changes for each independent state
since 1789 and have collected 95% of the documents associated with these
amendments and replacements. Some of these documents are under
copyright, but the repository will include all publicly available
materials. - FORUM.
A third component of constitutionmaking.org
features regular commentary from scholars on issues and events
surrounding constitutional design. The goal is the same as that for constitutionmaking.org
more generally: to connect scholars and drafters. We endeavor to
bring to light two sorts of information: (1) reports of constitutional
deliberation (and challenges therein) from various corners of the world,
and (2) reports of noteworthy research on the subject. The ideas are
serious but the tone is direct and lively. Recent posts have
covered recent constitutional activity in Bolivia,
Venezuela, Thailand, and Burma.
We hope
that constitutionmaking.org
will grow as a place for discussion and interaction between experts engaged
in constitution-making processes, and we invite you to share comments,
queries, and materials.
Most
Sincerely,
Tom Ginsburg
Zachary Elkins
Alex Thier