Welcome to CCD Website

The Center for Constitutional Democracy (CCD) at Indiana University Maurer School of Law studies and promotes constitutional democracy in countries marked by ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other divisions.

Founded and directed by John S. Hastings Professor of Law David C. Williams, the CCD works on Burma, Liberia, and Vietnam, training the reform leaders of these countries in constitutionalism, parliamentary process, and legal ordering. The Center is also developing programs in other countries, including Cuba and Central Asia. Our efforts are focused on the constitutional aspects of democratic reform, enabling plural societies to peaceably provide meaningful self-governance to all their citizens. No issue is more significant to the well-being of the world’s peoples.

Our Approach

To promote constitutional democracy, the CCD bridges the world of ideas and the world of affairs. The center brings together leaders of reform movements in countries struggling for constitutional democracy and university scholars who have expertise useful to those reformers. The center has a scholarship function (holding conferences and producing books, transcripts, articles, etc.), a teaching function (through our Ph.D. program on Law and Democracy and our J.D. Affiliate program), and an outreach function (training, advising, and consulting with leaders of democratic reform). In short, the center seeks to put the power of ideas to work in the world. It is committed both to understanding constitutionalism as an academic concept and to going out beyond the university to cities, jungles, mountains, and deserts where people are trying to make a better future.

Our Team

Law is especially relevant to democratic reform, but many other disciplines are also central to the center’s work, as the successful inclusion of identity groups within a society’s constitutional vision requires expertise in economics, political science, public management, labor relations, international affairs, and other disciplines. The center therefore has roots in the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, but has gathered an interdisciplinary team of scholars from law, other Indiana University departments, and universities abroad. With its institutional independence, rich intellectual resources, and extensive area programs, Indiana University offers an especially good home for such work.