HOW READABLE IS THE LAW?
Transparency of law is a critical driver of the Rule of Law. At a fundamental level everyone needs to be able to understand the law.
This is why the Rule of Law analytics team uses data science to measure the readability of the law (using the SMOG index).
In this analysis we focus on the global constitutions.
smog rankings
The SMOG index analyzes text by the number of years of education typically required to be able to understand it.
The table below shows our analysis of all country constitutions by the SMOG index, the associated level of education, and the % of that population who have a high school education.
why does this matter?
Because, according to the SMOG analysis, the majority of the world’s population do not have the education required to understand the supreme law of their country.
This is because 80% of the world’s constitutions require some level of college education to fully understand them and – while estimates vary – less than 10% of the world’s population have a college education.