Lecture
Asian Law
In this lecture professor Harding considered the implications of Asia's 21st-century rise for its legal systems and our approaches to studying them in the new situation we confront in the early 21st century.
- Author
- Andrew Harding
- Date
- 16 May 2012
He asked: what important changes are taking place? What kinds of Asian legal study are now appropriate? What is the current role of academia, East and West, in studying Asian legal systems?
Professor Harding took as his main examples the emergence of consitutionalism in Asia, and discussed the opening up of Burma and its law reform process, examining how legal scholarship and the law and development movement might respond to this remarkable event.
Andrew Harding is a leading scholar in the fields of Asian legal studies and comparative constitutional law. He was recently appointed Director of the newly established Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore. It is the purpose of this Centre to study Asian legal systems from Asian perspectives and priorities, moving the centre of gravity for Asian legal studies from West to East.
The Van Vollenhoven lectures are organized in honour of Cornelis van Vollenhoven, the Leiden law professor who acquired fame between 1901 and 1933 for his elaborate and detailed description and analysis of the laws of the Netherlands-Indies as well as for his impressive contributions to public international law.