I'm working on a cross country study about security laws (such as the PATRIOT Act in the US) that are affecting civil liberties. I was thinking about creating a typology of civil liberties (such as freedom of press, freedom of assembly etc.) and connecting this with a list of laws that are affecting those same liberties (for example. reducing freedom of speech/censoring internet communication in the name of security).
The next step is creating a ordinal ranking and afterwards applying this to laws in several democratic and non-democratic countries.
Has anybody done this before? Has anyone good ideas about methodology?