Comparative Constitutions Project

The project was founded by Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg in 2005 when they were colleagues at the University of Illinois and fellows at the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research.[3][4] James Melton, a graduate student at Illinois, joined Elkins and Ginsburg as a full collaborator before leaving academia in 2015.[8] A first stage of the project has entailed the documentation, or census, of each historical constitutional "event" (e.g., replacement, amendment, suspension, etc.)"[16] More than 200 studies have employed the data for the analysis of the origins and effects of constitutional choices, as well as a description of institutional forms over time.[23] The site receives some 7,000 visitors a day and has won a number of awards for civic tech contributions and information design.
academic studyconstitutionsTom GinsburgUniversity of Illinoisseed moneyNational Science FoundationgraduateIllinoisacademiacollaborationUniversity of TexasUniversity of Chicagoscholarscomparative politicscomparative lawinventoryconstitutionaldocumentationcensuschronologicalChronologyindependent statemicrostatesinstitutional reformsystemsinterimvisualizationchronologiesonlineengineersGoogledatasetemployedanalysissite mapsstandardizedontologyGoogle IdeasJigsawSpanishArabiccivic techinformation designSemantic Webstandardized vocabularydatasetspolitics