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88 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. [i] (2012-2013)

handle is hein.journals/chknt88 and id is 1 raw text is: CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW VOLUME 88 2012 NUMBER 1 CONTENTS METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO ASIAN CONSTITUTIONALISM SYMPOSIUM EDITORS ERNEST CALDWELL AND TERRY NARDIN INTRODUCTION Ernest Caldwell 3 and Terry Nardin CONSTITUTIONALISM: EAST ASIAN ANTECEDENTS Tom Ginsburg 11 To what degree can traditional Asian political and legal institutions be seen as embodying constitutionalist values? This question has risen to the fore in recent decades as part of a new attention to constitutionalism around the world, as well as the decline in orientalist perceptions of Asia as a region of oppressive legal traditions. This article juxtaposes East Asian analogues or antecedents of constitu- tionalism with a particular set of recent theoretical understandings of the concept of constitutionalism. After conducting a historical review of political and legal in- stitutions in China, Japan and Korea, the article argues that we can indeed speak of an East Asian constitutionalist tradition. East Asia has long had notions of limited government and constraint on authority and had, at certain times and places, genuine institutional constraints on authority. CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE RULE OF LAW: CONSIDERING THE CASE FOR ANTECEDENTS Rogers M. Smith 35 Tom Ginsburg credibly establishes that East Asian legal traditions include ele- ments that can be considered antecedents for perhaps the strongest form of the rule of law, constitutional restraints that apply even to sovereigns. Treating these precedents chiefly as anticipations of Western-style constitutionalism, however, may be historically misleading and may inhibit reflection on the desirability of practices that represent alternatives to Western conceptions of the rule of law. EXCAVATING CONSTITUTIONAL ANTECEDENTS IN ASIA: AN ESSAY ON THE POTENTIAL AND PERILS Arun K. Thiruvengadam 45 This essay seeks to endorse Tom Ginsburg's call for studies that expand the relatively limited range of historically informed scholarship on constitutional law