Comparative Constitutions Project

The Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) was launched in 2005 to explore the origins and consequences of constitutional choices. CCP produces comprehensive data about the world’s constitutions, tracking the characteristics of current and historical written constitutions for most independent states dating back to 1789. While CCP started as an effort to understand how constitutions work, it has grown into an effort to change how they work, or rather, how we use them.

CCP has analyzed the topics in thousands of constitutions and made those data publicly available on the Comparative Constitutions Project site. CCP also indexes these topics in constitutional texts on its platform Constitute. The platform serves as a resource for constitution drafters and citizens to explore varied approaches to drafting topics and to inform constitutional design around the world, drawing some 10,000 unique visitors every day. The site contains the full text in English, indexed with CCP topics, for nearly every active national constitution in the world, with subsets of these constitutions also available in Arabic and Spanish on Arabic Constitute and Constitute en Español. Visitors can browse 300+ topics tagged by CCP, run their own searches, sort results by region or time period, and pin content for further analysis.

CCP provides technical assistance and research to support ongoing constitutional processes. This includes working with governments to develop tools to support constitution drafting processes like the Comparador de Constituciones del Mundo supporting the constituent process in Chile. This also includes making draft constitutions and comparison tools available for the public to analyze proposed drafts in real time. This also includes research projects currently underway with several international partners, producing analysis for constitutional dialiogues and reforms.

The CCP team is directed by Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg and includes Ashley Moran as research director and Roy Gardner as research asociate. UT students have played an indispensible part in the updating and expansion of constitutional data available through CCP. Current UT students and postgrads working on the project include postdoctoral researcher Matthew Martin and PhD students Andrés Cruz and Guillermo Pérez as senior research analysts.

UT students interested to intern with CCP can reach out to Zachary Elkins and Ashley Moran.