Overview of the Series
The four-volume series Asian Comparative Constitutional Law aims to provide an authoritative account of four major issues in comparative constitutional law across Asian jurisdictions.
The four volumes are:• Volume I: Constitution-Making
• Volume II: Constitutional Amendment
• Volume III: Constitutional Structure
• Volume IV: Constitutional Rights
Each volume is dedicated to a particular major theme, allowing for a more indepth and focused exploration of the Asian constitutional experience from a comparative perspective. The Series offers a combination of both theme-based and jurisdiction-based approaches. Each volume in the Series will focus on a single theme through a set of common research questions and include detailed casestudies of different jurisdictions alongside comparative analysis. This arrangement allows for the combination of both meticulous case-studies and comparative enquiry.
An engagement with Asia contributes to the development of comparative constitutional law and a better understanding of the Asian constitutional experience. Regrettably, Asia has been under-represented in comparative constitutional law scholarship, and there is a lack of engagement with comparative constitutional law literature in the studies of Asian constitutional law. This Series seeks to fill both scholarly gaps.
First, the academic field of comparative constitutional law has been expanding in recent years, but Asian jurisdictions have often been marginalised within the field. Although recent efforts have attempted to integrate Asia into comparative constitutional law,[1] Asian experiences have been under-represented in the field, particularly in recent global debate on major issues of comparative constitutional law, such as constitution-making, constitutional amendment, constitutional structure, and constitutional rights.
Second, this Series seeks to fill the academic gap created by the lack of engagement with comparative constitutional law scholarship in existing studies of Asian constitutional law.
While there is a growing body of scholarship on Asian constitutional law,[2] the existing literature on Asian constitutional law tends to be single-nation focused, and is less connected to broader comparative constitutional debates. There are a handful of trailblazing comparative works,[3] which locate Asia within comparative constitutional law scholarship. However, these studies tend to focus on either judicial question, particular jurisdictions (eg South Asia), or particular periods of time (eg the twenty-first century). This Series seeks to expand the substantive, jurisdictional, and temporal scope of comparative constitutional law in Asia. It aims to explore judicial questions (eg, how courts define constitutional identity and protect rights), but will expand to major non-judicial questions, including constitution-making, constitutional amendments, and political institutions and rights. The Series will also include different jurisdictions in Asia and cover both twentieth and twenty-first century constitutional experiences.II.