The Goldwater Institute is a Phoenix, Arizona-based conservative and libertarian public policy think tank. The Institute's stated mission is "to defend and strengthen the freedom guaranteed to all Americans in the constitutions of the United States and all fifty states." The organization was established in 1988 with the support of the late U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. The organization was primarily a public policy research organization until 2007, when it added a litigation arm, becoming the first state-based policy organization to do so. Goldwater's litigation arm, the Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, engages in lawsuits against government entities across the United States.