Show HN: Semantic atlas of 188 constitutions in 3D (30k articles, embeddings)

▲ Show HN: Semantic atlas of 188 constitutions in 3D (30k articles, embeddings)(constitutionalmap.ai)

10 points by joaoli131 a day ago | 4 comments

I built this after noticing that existing tools for comparing constitutional law either have steep learning curves or only support keyword search. By combining Gemini embeddings with UMAP projection, you can navigate 30,828 constitutional articles from 188 countries in 3D and find conceptually related provisions even when the wording differs.

  Feedback welcome, especially from legal researchers or comparative law folks.

  Source and pipeline: github.com/joaoli13/constitutional-map-ai

▲ peterbecich a day ago | parent | next [-]

Neat, how about adding historical constitutions as well, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_constitutions_of_Franc... or the U.S.S.R.?

	▲	joaoli131 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Adding a temporal dimension is a great idea. It would offer a fascinating perspective on the data by allowing us to track the 'semantic drift' of legal frameworks over time. Brazil is actually a perfect use case for this: the country has had 7 different constitutions since its imperial era (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Constitution_of...). Plotting its transitions through a monarchy, dictatorial periods, and modern democracy—alongside historical texts like the French Republics or the U.S.S.R.—would let us visualize exactly how a nation's priorities shift within the latent space across different political eras. Thank you for the suggestion! I will seriously consider advancing the project in this direction.

▲ cineticdaffodil a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Constitutionalism is a leftover of the liberal worldview. Just write a perfectly formulated watertight document, read it to the people and voila perfect state of affairs. Same with laws. Just flash a citizen and he is ready for action.

But it turned out the surface layer is a very leaky abstraction. Culture makes and breaks societies and even worse by result, rationally designed synthetic culture works as well as socialism. And finally if a society drops beneath a treshold of riches, it regresses into tribal warfare universally.

The constitution can do nothing to prevent this, but try to survive into the next sunny season unaltered. How can i filter constitutions for absence of idealizattions and utopism?

	▲	cineticdaffodil 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The classic extreme here is the french code civic vs the english lack of a constitution, more a build up of precedence into a constituting body of law case by case. Its idealization, universalism, utopism and ignorace of the cultural ooerating system vs prgmatism in its purest form.