A Constitutional Primer from Google

Whether you’re a high school student struggling through U.S. history class or a legal expert helping a budding nation write a new constitution, Google’s new tool for examining and comparing founding documents from around the globe is a neat new resource.

Launched Monday, Constitute is a digitized archive of founding documents from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe that also helps visitors examine hundreds of constitutional themes, such as rights, duties, culture and identity. As Google’s Brendan Ballou explains, “If you are writing a constitution and want to know what African constitutions have to say about the rights of women after 1945, you can do that in just a few clicks.”

Using seed funding from Google Ideas, the internet conglomerate partnered with researchers from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), who hatched the idea to source and reference the content in 2008.

With the turmoil in Somalia, Syria and Egypt leading to either new constitutions or or revised ones in those nations, exploring the international landscape of constitutions feels especially timely.

Watch the Google video below to learn more about how it works:

Source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/a-constitutional-primer-from-google/