Come, Mix and Match a Constitution

Alex E. Jones once said:

“The answer to 1984 is 1776.”

If you don’t like the American slant of that line, feel free to replace 1776 with “a constitution”. And the Internet just made that a whole lot easier.

Yes, that’s right: the Internet just made it easy to cross-reference material while you try to be the next BR Ambedkar or Thomas Jefferson. Which makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, with around 160 active constitutions around the globe, there’s a whole lot of material to refer to. The problem (until now) was that each one was written in a different format: so how does one pick and choose parts from each? As Google said in its blog:

“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.”

That is where Google’s partnership with Comparative Constitutions Project comes into the picture. Together, they launched a site called Constitute that shows entire drafts of constitutions and, more importantly, allows you to compare them based on specific attributes (like the role of the executive etc).

Sound too niche? How many new countries are being formed anyway, you wonder? True, but the real question is how many constitutions are being re-written? As per Google:

“Every year approximately five new constitutions are written.”

And there are the amendments to make, since as Thomas Jefferson put it:

“The dead should not rule the living.”

In case you are one of the naysayers who like to cite the British constitution as being “unwritten”, that’s a technicality. While it’s true that the British constitution is not written as a single document that has all the rules, it is replaced by a number of treaties, laws and conventions that put together form the rule book (Acts of Parliament, treaties, Common Law to name a few).

Or you could just use it for your next civics exercise at school.