Social Difference and Constitutionalism in Pan-Asia

This book addresses the role of constitutions and constitutionalism in dealing with the challenges of social difference across Pan-Asia.

In many countries, social differences, such as religion or race and ethnicity, threaten the stability of the social and legal order. This book addresses the role of constitutions and constitutionalism in dealing with the challenge of difference. The book brings together lawyers, political scientists, historians, religious studies scholars, and area studies experts to consider how constitutions address issues of difference across 'Pan-Asia', a wide swath of the world that runs from the Middle East, through Asia, and into Oceania. The book's multidisciplinary and comparative approach makes it unique. The book is organized into five sections, each devoted to constitutional approaches to a particular type of difference - religion, ethnicity/race, urban/rural divisions, language, and gender and sexual orientation - in two or more countries in Pan Asia. The introduction offers a framework for thinking comprehensively about the many ways constitutionalism interacts with difference.

Part I. Language: 1. Negotiating differences: India's language policy Benjamin B. Cohen; 2. Constitution and language in post-independence Central Asia William Fierman; Part II. Urban/Rural: 3. Dreams of redemption: localist strategies of political reform in the Philippines Paul Hutchcroft; 4. Constitutional rights and dialogic process in socialist Vietnam: protecting rural-to-urban migrants' rights without a constitutional court Huong Nguyen; Part III. Ethnicity and Race: 5. Asymmetrical federalism in Burma David C. Williams; 6. Hu wants something new: discourse and the deep structure of Minzu policies in China Gardner Bovingdon; Part IV. Religion: 7. Sectarian visions of the Iraqi state: irreconcilable differences? Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi; 8. Constitutionalism and religious difference in Israel (and a brief passage to Malaysia) Ran Hirschl; Part V. Gender and Sexuality: 9. Australia's gendered constitutional history and future Kim Rubenstein and Christabel Richards-Neville; 10. Islamic feminism(s): promoting gender egalitarianism and challenging constitutional constraints Asma Afsaruddin; 11. India, Nepal, and Pakistan: a unique South Asian constitutional discourse on sexual orientation and gender identity Sean Dickson and Steve Sanders.

Susan H. Williams is the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She is the author of Truth, Autonomy, and Speech: Feminist Theory and the First Amendment (2004), which won the Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice Magazine, as well as many articles and book chapters. She is the editor of Constituting Equality: Gender Equality and Comparative Constitutional Law (Cambridge, 2011). Her scholarship focuses on issues related to gender equality, constitutional design, and feminist theory.