Constitutional Courts in Asia: A Comparative Perspective

The founding of a constitutional court is often an indication of a chosen path of constitutionalism and democracy. It is no coincidence that most of the constitutional courts in East and Southeast Asia were established at the same time as the transition of the countries concerned from authoritarianism to liberal constitutional democracy. This book is the first to provide systematic narratives and analysis of Asian experiences of constitutional courts and related developments, and to introduce comparative, historical and theoretical perspectives on these experiences, as well as debates on the relevant issues in countries that do not as yet have constitutional courts. This volume makes a significant contribution to the systematic and comparative study of constitutional courts, constitutional adjudication and constitutional developments in East and Southeast Asia and beyond.

Albert H. Y. Chen is an LL.B. and LL.M. graduate of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Harvard University, Massachusetts, respectively. He began his academic career in 1984 at HKU. He then served as Head of the Department of Law (1993–96), Dean of the Faculty of Law (1996–2002), and is currently the Cheng Chan Lan Yue Professor in Constitutional Law at HKU. His areas of specialization include Hong Kong constitutional law, the study of Chinese law and Asian law from the comparative law perspective, and legal and political theory. He is the author of An Introduction to the Legal System of the People's Republic of China (2011), and co-editor of Human Rights in Asia (2006), Administrative Law and Governance in Asia (2008), Legal Reforms in China and Vietnam (2010), and Public Law in East Asia (2013). He is the editor of Constitutionalism in Asia in the Early Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2014).

Andrew Harding works in the fields of Asian legal studies and comparative constitutional law. He commenced his academic career at the National University of Singapore (NUS) before moving to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he became Head of the Law School and Director of the Centre for South East Asian Studies. In 2012, he joined NUS, as Director of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies and Director of the Asian Law Institute, from the University of Victoria, Canada. He has worked extensively on constitutional law in Malaysia and Thailand, and more recently in Myanmar, and has made extensive contributions to scholarship in Asian comparative law. He is co-founding-editor of the book series Constitutional Systems of the World, a major resource for constitutional law in context, and has authored the books on Malaysia and Thailand in that series (2011, 2012). He has recently edited Constitutionalism and Legal Change in Myanmar (2016).