Documents in Negotiated Texts

Documents

The output of most negotiations is a document or set of documents. In the course of producing these, many interim drafts will be created. Documents and drafts that are created and amended during the negotiations process are, themselves, drafts of the final text that the negotiations process will eventually create.

In a formal process of debate, almost all proposals are written down in some form. The Quill Platform provides a kind of 'track changes for historians' that allows you to explore exactly what was being discussed at any moment.

What can I do with Quill?

On the Quill Platform, documents can be:

• Created / Introduced for discussion
• Have amendments proposed
• Passed from one committee to another

Members of negotiations can:

• Introduce new text for discussion
• Debate a specific proposal
• Make a decision on a particular proposal

They can also decide to:

• Adopt a proposal
• Reject a proposal
• Refer a proposal to another committee for discussion
• Postpone a decision on a proposal

We also note within the model when they:

• Take a vote on a proposal that neither means it is adopted nor rejected -- typically having the effect of keeping a proposal under discussion
• Drop a discussion of a subject without a formal vote

Exploring the Constitutional Convention through the Quill platform

The Quill platform provides a variety of tools to explore the documents of the Convention. For example:

• Following the Flow of Documents between Committees
• Explore the documents of the convention session by session
• Examine documents and drafts in further detail
• Compare and contrast the agreed text, intermediate text, proposed text from specific sessions and highlight changes