The Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is building a ‘Constitution Explorer’ website that will host a structured database of constitutions to enable people to compare and contrast other countries' constitutions as they undergo their own national projects for constitutional change. For example, this interactive platform will allow users to learn how other emerging democracies have incorporated complex legal, political, and human rights clauses in their constitutions. Currently, most constitutions can be found online, but in order to understand how different constitutions have tackled a challenging issue (e.g. appointment of judges, role of religion, ect), one has to go through each constitution manually. Constitution Explorer will have a database where each article of each constitution is tagged by subject, allowing quick and meaningful searches.

When possible, Constitution Explorer will strive to provide translations of all text to lift the barrier of language and provide a discussion platform for our users to debate these important issues. The website will also host articles by legal and political experts on specific themes like empowerment of women or tackling corruption, helping to contextualize and unpack complex constitutional clauses and terminology for all to benefit from. All constitutional data from Constitution Explorer will be available in an open format for the wider community to contribute to this process.

How you can help: Participate in Constitution Day!

Saturday, November 12, 201

The Program on Liberation Technology is calling all legal enthusiasts, political scientists, and constitutional experts interested in contributing to a project that will aid activists, legal scholars, and the general public with the constitution writing process! Your participation in Constitution Day will help impact post-revolutionary states in the Arab world and beyond to have powerful information available to them as they undergo this historic process and begin to build the foundations of a democratic state.

Constitution Explorer is already a reality with a running prototype. However, it is still missing many constitutions, translations, and most of all categorization. In order for the search experience to be meaningful for our global users, we will "categorize" each article of a constitution by subject, allowing the user to browse not only by country but also by concept. We also want to provide notes that will clarify each article and the issues that it relates to. Many constitutions also require translations to be understandable by the largest number of people possible. And for all this, we need you!

The Program on Liberation Technology is organizing an international Constitution Day on Saturday November 12, 2011 when volunteers will gather in local groups - with computer in hand - to help categorize, translate and annotate. The team has already developed a tagging taxonomy and guidelines to facilitate the categorization process, but needs a little bit of your time to begin tagging articles of select constitutions.

Constitution Day will feature online sessions during the day, so you will be able to connect and talk to other participants internationally. There are no specific requirements, except a basic knowledge and interest in law (especially constitutional law), and an enthusiasm towards this endeavor. There are no specific computer skills required, the team just asks that you participate in a mock training session, follow the taxonomy, and most of all have fun!

The Program on Liberation Technology will be convening a group at Stanford University and there will be similar gatherings with international partners worldwide. This is also something that you can participate in virtually but the team encourages you to have a partner to work with as this is a deliberative process and it helps to work with a small team.

For more information on Constitution Day and how you can participate, please contact estelle.comment@gmail.com for more information. To participate, please fill out the form here.  

Recognizing the political consequences for Europe of Muslim immigration, and relying on a novel identification strategy, this paper investigates why Muslim assimilation into French cultural norms is incomplete, and provides experimental and survey evidence that reveals the low expected payoffs that Muslim immigrants in France receive for full assimilation. While the data show that rooted French people initially distrust Muslims (compared to a matched set of Christians)  in part due to their unwillingness to fully assimilate, the real source of Muslim reluctance to fully assimilate is their perception that in anonymous transactions (i.e., through French institutions) they will always be perceived as foreign and face discrimination.

Workshop paper is available to Stanford affiliates upon request by email to khaley@stanford.edu

David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics, nation-state formation, ethnic conflict, and religion. Among his publications are Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience (1977), Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba (1986), Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (1992), Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (1998), and Nations, States and Violence (2007). Prof. Laitin has been a recipient of fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Event Summary

Professor Laitin opens the seminar by providing background on the research project that motivated the paper. This examined: whether Muslim immigrants in France faced unique social and economic barriers; the source of the barriers; and whether French republicanism exacerbated or lessened the barriers. He provides a brief summary of studies examining the first and third points, but the focus of his talk was on the second point: if there are higher barriers for Muslims, who is building them?

Professor Laitin then describes the study his research team carried out on a Senegalese population in France for 15 years, drawing on equal-sized groups of Muslims and Christians from similar social and economic conditions. Through a series of games and surveys, the team observed that within Senegalese Muslims in France, certain groups assimilate more than others, and those that assimilate less are treated worse by French individuals and institutions. Many of the Muslims expected to be treated less generously by French individuals, and reported more experiences of discrimination from French institutions, which Professor Laitin's team found was more difficult to overcome than individual discrimination. This group also exhibited stronger financial ties (measured by investments and remittances sent to Senegal from France) and emotional ties (measured by desire to be buried in Senegal rather than France after death). The results of the study are used to provide a series of decision rules and reward matrixes for incoming Senegalese Muslims, including the likelihood of penalties and rewards for assimilation, such as giving children French names.

During a discussion period following the presentation, such questions were raised as: Do the results of the study have more to do with the respondents being Muslim, or simply not being French - or, do other ethnic or religious groups have the same problems assimilating into French Catholic society? Is the example of preferences for burial locations more about ties to Senegal than lack of ties to France? How much of the effect is due to being black rather than Muslim? Will the results of the study change as the Muslim population in France increases? What has been the reception in France to the prohibition of collecting ethnographic data? Why is "incomplete assimilation" framed as a "response" to the discrimination - is it a choice or is it just the way things are? Where does the fault lie in the discrimination reported in the survey?

The unprecedented rapid rate of scientific progress is creating new opportunities for transnational criminal and terrorist organizations to exploit advances in technology for unintended nefarious purposes. While much research has been dedicated on the common cyber security threats of today, little if any study has been devoted to next generation forms of technological crime and terrorism.

This discussion will provide an engaging and entertaining futurist perspective on the effects technological progress on crime, policing and national security. Specific topics to be covered include the criminal and terrorist implications of emerging technologies such as robotics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, the human genome, virtual worlds, the social data revolution and ubiquitous computing.

Speaker Biography: Marc Goodman is a global thinker, writer and consultant focused on the disruptive impact of advancing technologies on security, business and international affairs.  Over the past twenty years, he has built his expertise in next generation security threats such as cyber crime and cyber terrorism working with organizations such as Interpol, the United Nations, NATO, the Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Government.  Marc provides a front seat view into the digital underground and insights into the emerging technological, geopolitical, and security trends shaping our common future.

Mr. Goodman frequently advises industry leaders, security executives and global policy makers on transnational cyber risk and intelligence and founded the Future Crimes Institute to inspire and educate others on the security implications of newly emerging technologies.  In addition, Mr. Goodman serves as the Chair for Policy, Law and Ethics at Silicon Valley’s Singularity University, a NASA and Google sponsored educational venture dedicated to using advanced science and technology to address humanity’s grand challenges.