This book of text, cases and materials from Asia is designed for scholars and students of constitutional law and comparative constitutional law. The book is divided into 11 chapters, arranged thematically around key ideas and controversies, enabling the reader to work through the major facets of constitutionalism in the region. The book begins with a lengthy introduction that critically examines the study of constitutional orders in 'Asia', highlighting the histories, colonial influences, and cultural particularities extant in the region. This chapter serves both as a provisional orientation towards the major constitutional developments seen in Asia - both unique and shared with other regions - and as a guide to the controversies encountered in the study of constitutional law in Asia. Each of the following chapters is framed by an introductory essay setting out the issues and succinctly highlighting critical perspectives and themes. The approach is one of 'challenge and response', whereby questions of constitutional importance are posed and the reader is then led, by engaging with primary and secondary materials, through the way the various Asian states respond to these questions and challenges. Chapter segments are accompanied by notes, comments and questions to facilitate critical and comparative analysis, as well as recommendations for further reading.The book presents a representative range of Asian materials from jurisdictions including: Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka , Taiwan, Timor-Leste and the 10 ASEAN states.

The rise of Asia in global political and economic developments has been facilitated in part by a profound transformation of Asian courts. This book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of these courts, explaining how their structures differ from courts in the West and how they have been shaped by the current challenges facing Asia. Contributors from across the continent analyze fourteen selected Asian jurisdictions representing varying degrees of development: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, China and Vietnam. Setting the courts of each region in the context of their country's economic, political, and social dynamics, this book shows how and why Asian courts have undergone such profound transformations in recent years and predicts the future trajectories of tradition, transition and globalization to suggest the challenges and developments that lie ahead.

In addition to the economic miracle, with surprising growth in the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan has further shown the world two others. One is the democratic miracle which brought about a silent revolution from notorious authoritarian regime to full democracy in Asia. Intertwined with that miracle is the constitutional one, in which political reform was undertaken in a constitutional manner and through constitutional means. Indeed, Taiwan's transition to democracy was made possible by incremental constitutional revisions, courts responsive to changing dynamics, and a civil society engaged in the project of constitutional transformation. These changes ushered in the unprecedented development of a transitional and transnational constitutionalism. This volume seeks to explain the drivers and context of these constitutional transformations. Democratisation, indigenisation and globalisation all drove the transformation of an externally imposed constitution into an internally embraced, vibrant constitution. The changes analysed in this volume include institutional shifts from a cabinet system to a semi-presidential one; from three parliaments to one; from manipulated central-local relations to a functional federalism; from a Constitutional Court that merely rubber-stamped to one that is responsive and supports social and political dialogues. More importantly, this volume details how a short list of constitutional rights has been transformed to a burgeoning rights-based discourse engaged by civil society.