World Constitutions Illustrated: Contemporary and Historical Documents and Resources
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Additional Resources
This site aggregates information on world constitutions from all over the web.
Center for Research on Direct Democracy
C2D is an academic research center dedicated to the study of direct democracy around the world. It contains information on the institutions (referendum and popular initiative) of direct democracy as well as on their use in popular votes, promoting interdisciplinary scientific research, organizing conferences and providing services.
Comparative Constitutions Project
The Comparative Constitutions Project produces comprehensive data about the world’s constitutions. It investigates the sources and consequences of constitutional choices through the collection of data on the formal characteristics of written constitutions, both current and historical, for most independent states since 1789.
Constitute offers access to the world’s constitutions in a way that allows users to systematically compare them across a broad set of topics.
ConstitutionNet is a project created to support legislators, constitutional lawyers and other constitutional practitioners in finding useful and relevant information, sharing knowledge and building a community of best practice.
Founded to lead the public education on constitutional history, law, and government, the Constitution Society provides information on the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, and other aspects of U.S. law.
International Constitutional Law
ICL provides English translations of and other textual material related to constitutional documents. It cross-references those documents for quick comparison of constitutional provisions.
International Network to Promote the Rule of Law Community of Practice (INPROL)
The International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL) is a global, online community of practice, comprised of some 3000 rule of law practitioners from 120 countries and 400 organizations. It is a project of the United States Institute of Peace and is available to members only.
This site aggregates United States and United Kingdom political and government stories, resources, and information.
Constitution Writing & Conflict Resolution
From Princeton University, this site contains materials from Jennifer Widner's project on constitutional design processes. It includes a repository with information about steps countries have taken to produce new constitutions since 1975, including more than 190 country summaries as well as reports on special topics.
From the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law, GlobaLex is an electronic legal publication dedicated to international and foreign law research.
Government and Geographic Information
From Northwestern University, the Government and Geographic Information Collection contains materials produced by the U.S. Federal government, the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago and several international governmental organizations, including the United Nations.
A project for the University of Michigan, this site identifies government legal gazettes that are available on the web. It includes annotations such as URL, frequency of publication, dates, format, contents, and price.
Political Database of the Americas
The Political Database of the Americas is a project of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. It offers centralized and systematized information about institutions and political processes, national constitutions, branches of government, elections, political constitutional studies and other subjects relating to the strengthening of democracy in the region.
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation ("Constitution Annotated" or "CONAN") provides a legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution based on a comprehensive review of Supreme Court case law and, where relevant, historical practices that have defined the text of the Constitution. This regularly updated resource is written in "plain English" and useful for a wide audience: from constitutional scholars to those just beginning to learn about the nation's most important legal document.
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
From the U.S. Department of State, the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, also known as the Human Rights Reports, cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements.
This collection from the Library of Congress contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world. Most books in the series deal with a single foreign country, but a few cover several countries or a geographic region. The series includes several books on countries that no longer exist in their original configuration—such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. These books remain in the series because they continue to offer valuable historical information and perspective. In some cases, studies on successor states are also part of the series.
Foreign Legal Gazette Collection
The Law Library of Congress contains one of the largest collections of foreign official gazettes in the world. Its collection includes current, historical, and subnational jurisdictions. This interactive guide allows users to search by jurisdiction (either via the facets on the left, or by clicking on the map), title, content and format, to request material for use within the Library or view those freely available online.
Framing of the United States Constitution: A Beginner's Guide (Library of Congress)
A research guide containing sources regarding the creation and ratification of the United States Constitution.
A project of the Library of Congress, Global Gateway provides a portal to resources and databases focusing on history and cultures around the world.
The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information.
U.S. State Department Self Study Guides
The U.S. Department of State provided these thirty five Self Study Guides in response to a FOIA request. This series of study guides, each covering a country or geographic area, were prepared for the use of USAID staff assigned to temporary duty in those countries. The guides are designed to allow individuals to familiarize themselves with the country or area in which they will be posted. These guides range in date from 2000 - 2006. There are a few guides which are undated but, from their content, appear to date from the early 2000s.
From the Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.