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I've been disappointed by the lack of online communities dedicated to people who are interested in the craft of drafting constitutions.

One of my pet-projects is to work on a draft constitution for my country (i.e., Taiwan) in Google Doc, which has a reasonable chance of rewriting its constitution within my lifetime. The level of research and creativity that goes into it is profoundly stimulating and enjoyable, it calls on all of your intellectual faculties in law, humanity, ethics, etc.

I just want to find a place where I can talk about these things with like-minded people and perhaps swap our projects. I've tried Reddit with little result.

Hope that I'm not alone in this. They did say no interest is too niche on the Internet.

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  • There is certainly some academic literature comparing constitutions.
    – benjimin
    Jul 5 at 18:25
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    Not sure this ontopic here. Recommendations typically get outdated soon, although that one could be interesting. Maybe post on meta what people think about such questions. Maybe the question can be generalized a bit, like how do political interest groups form in general or so.
    – Trilarion
    Jul 5 at 22:03
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    Constitutional law is actually a discipline that is studied by law students in many countries. There are also internationally recognized principles of drafting constitutions, which, e.g., applied to demonstrate de facto existence of constitution in states that do not have any (Britain, Germany, Israel - the list is longer than one might expect). So there is a community... but more one of professionals than enthusiasts.
    – Roger Vadim
    Jul 6 at 9:02
  • @Roger Vadim Germany has a constitution.
    – convert
    Jul 6 at 11:56
  • @convert Germany has Basic law, which is equivalent to constitution with some minor caveats (e.g., it was never submitted to the popular vote) - this is precisely the kind of details that the constitutional lawyers concern themselves with.
    – Roger Vadim
    Jul 6 at 12:14
  • @Roger Vadim One of Germanies inteligence services is cllaed "defense of Constitution" (Verfassungsschutz).
    – convert
    Jul 7 at 12:22
  • @convert is this in response to the Wiki article? (The term "constitution" (Verfassung) was avoided as the drafters regarded the Grundgesetz as an interim arrangement for a provisional West German state, expecting that an eventual reunified Germany would adopt a proper constitution, enacted under the provisions of Article 146 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that such a constitution must be "freely adopted by the German people".) Anyhow, I don't see your point - existence of such ambiguities only confirms what I said in my first comment.
    – Roger Vadim
    Jul 7 at 12:29

2 Answers 2

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There is a Discord community

... containing people that enjoy experimenting with constitutional drafting.

I cant say i know of a specialized server/channel/community. but...

"Discourse Nation"

They used it as a method of selecting new leaders in the server.

you may find like minded people there, so at the very least you will find others into such things (friends)

I personally find the idea fascinating in the same way as a puzzle; carefully constructing and compressing language... anyways. thats the best i can do.

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Yes, there are many projects in GitHub.

They use the collaborative development tools like Git that allow writing and reviewing any complex text. It is normally a text written in a programming language but can be also text of some legal document.

These tools resolve the main problems with the document that is being built by the team:

  • If multiple people edit non-overlapping parts of the document, the changes can be merged automatically.
  • If two people make changes in the same place, there is a merge conflict that human can still usually resolve.
  • If somebody proposes a change, a mature project may want to view the change separately and discuss by community before merging.
  • Issues can be raised via issue tracker, assigned, discussed and resolved, rather than people just making random edits.
  • If somebody does not like your constitution, can easily fork your project and make the own changes, and the diff of all changes made can be easily displayed.
  • Do use the open source license if your goal is to improve the humanity.

Many of the "constitutions" we see on a GitHub search look like some very limited scope projects intended for maybe student groups doing something and wanting a regulatory document for they organization. In some cases the complete constitutions of some countries are present as projects - these are probably not under exactly development.

Main challenge would be to raise a good idea above the swamp of the low quality content so that people would see. Contributing a good, competent draft of some constitution may help. In these days you cannot just setup an empty project and expect people to come.

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