Thammasat University students are cordially invited to download a free Open Access book at this link that should be useful for readers interested in constitutional and administrative law, Buddhism and Eastern religions, comparative law, comparative politics, policy-making, and related studies.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law was coedited by Professor Tom Ginsburg, who teaches international law and political science at the University of Chicago, the United States of America and Professor Benjamin Schonthal, who teaches Buddhist studies and Asian religions at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Professor Ginsburg is well-known as a scholar of international and comparative law, with a focus on constitutions and a regional specialty of East Asia.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law may be downloaded for free at this link:
The TU Library collection includes a number of other books by Professor Ginsburg.
The TU Library also owns published research by Professor Benjamin Schonthal as well as a number of books on different aspects of Buddhism and law.
The editors write in a preface:
As a collective project, this volume takes a twofold approach to the study of Buddhism and constitutions. It examines their nexus as a coming together of disparate traditions and as the integration of complementary ones. It considers the effects of constitutional discourse, institutions, and ideas on the practice of Buddhism and it examines the influence of Buddhist principles, actors, and rationales on the conception and practice of constitutional law. At the same time, the contributors to this volume also reveal that the spaces, discourses, and authorities associated with Buddhism are not always as foreign to those of constitutional thought as one might expect. Although we speak of Buddhism and constitutional law, in many ways, it is more accurate to talk about our object of investigation as the Buddhist–constitutional complex, an object that can connote both a singular amalgamation as well as a hybrid of distinct components. This play of commonality and difference, integration and separation, is echoed by the volume’s authors, who come from a diverse variety of scholarly disciplines including law, Buddhist studies, political science, anthropology, and history.
The contributions that follow examine the Buddhist–constitutional complex in almost all jurisdictions in Asia that have a large Buddhist population.Footnote3 While accurate estimates are difficult to come by, one can say that there are nearly 500 million Buddhists in Asia belonging to a variety of groups. A majority of citizens in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia follow the Theravāda (“the Doctrine of Elders”) tradition of Buddhism, which they consider to be the oldest and purest form of the religion. Vietnam, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea also have large numbers of Buddhists, although not enough to constitute an absolute majority. Most Buddhists in these countries observe a version of the Mahāyāna (“the Great Vehicle”) tradition of Buddhism, a broad and diverse collection of movements that, unlike the Theravāda tradition, differ widely in their key texts and doctrines. A majority of the population in Bhutan, Mongolia, and Tibet (including the Tibetan diaspora) identify as Buddhists and, for the most part, practice a version of the religion referred to as “the Thunderbolt Vehicle” (Vajrayāna), which originated in India before rising to particular prominence on the Tibetan plateau. Among other things, Vajrayāna Buddhists underscore the importance of esoteric knowledge and the institution of reincarnated monks, known as tulku in Tibet.
Although it is difficult to generalize about law, society, or religion across all of these places, we believe these jurisdictions constitute an important and coherent set for comparative consideration. That is because these countries are all settings in which Buddhist communities, doctrines, and institutions have had a formative influence on social and political life, both historically and in the present. To understand the full range of constitutional politics and practice in these places requires familiarity with what Matthew Walton calls the “moral universe” of Buddhism. This universe is grounded in ideas about transmigration and rebirth (saṃsāra), intentional action and its consequences (karma), cosmic truth and righteous teachings (dharma), spiritual awakening and those who have achieved it (buddhas and bodhisattvas). In the same way that Christian theological ideas and legal forms have had a major impact on the development and conception of constitutional law in Europe. Buddhist concepts like these – and others discussed in the chapters that follow – have had an important influence on the development and application of national constitutions in Asia. These jurisdictions have also given rise to a variety of genres and ideologies of legality that one might call “Buddhist law,” about which more will be said below.
While we do not assert that discussions of constitutional law ought to be shaped by a strong bifurcation between “Asian values” and “Western” ones, we do argue that a full and complete understanding of constitutional law in many parts of Asia demands a fuller understanding of Buddhism. This includes the ways in which declaredly Buddhist rationales, narratives, and textual forms, along with Buddhist clerics and organizations, have shaped how governments, judiciaries, and everyday people understand the nature and purpose of constitutional projects. Moreover, we further insist that a rigorous understanding of Buddhism, particularly since the mid-twentieth century, requires an awareness of how the rise of constitution-based national polities – the most common form of legal–political governance in the world – have affected and often altered how Buddhists conceive their own structures and practices of self-administration. We thus see a conversation between two large historical “normative social practices” that shapes both. This volume examines the interactions of constitutional and Buddhist traditions in historical and contemporary Asia. This introduction makes the case for why this topic is important, and argues that despite surface incongruities, constitutionalism and Buddhism share certain values, even if they differ in their typical institutional forms. We consider Buddhist idioms that speak to constitutional ideals, arguing that the two discourses address common problems of legitimation and constraint that arise in human polities. Further, we demonstrate that the influence of Buddhism on the constitutional politics of contemporary Asia has been substantial. We then situate the various case studies examined in this book in terms of the interaction and intertwining between Buddhism and various examples of constitutions. We conclude with thoughts on how scholars can extend the findings presented here.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)