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List of contents
1. Northeast Asian Constitutional Foundings: The Weight of History
Kevin YL Tan, National University of Singapore
2. The 1954 Constitution of China: Empire State-Building
Humphrey Ko, University of Hong Kong
3. The Making of the Constitutional Order of the Hong Kong SAR: The Role of Sino-British Diplomacy (1982–90)
Albert HY Chen, University of Hong Kong, and Michael Ng, University of Hong Kong
4. Macao’s Constitutional Founding
Xiaobo Zhai, University of Macau
5. The Birth of the Constitution of the Republic of China
Chien-Chih Lin, Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
6. The Meiji Constitution and Japan’s Emergence in the International Order, 1853–1905
Kentaro Matsubara, University of Tokyo, Japan
7. Thirty Years Old at Birth? The Constitutional Founding of the Republic of Korea
Chaihark Hahm, Yonsei University, South Korea
8. Constitutional Founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Erik Mobrand, Seoul National University, South Korea
9. The 1924 Constitution: Towards the Modernisation of Mongolia
Amarsanaa Batbold, National University of Mongolia and Chadraabal Unurbayar, National University of Mongolia
About the author
Kevin YL Tan is a leading scholar of Singapore's constitution and has written and edited over 30 books on the law, politics and history of Singapore. He is currently Adjunct Professor at both the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore and the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He is also Executive Editor of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Yearbook of International Law.Michael Ng is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong.
Summary
This new book in the Constitutionalism in Asia series considers the idea of origins, and of change and continuity in terms of ‘constitution-making’, which is an on-going process in the Northeast Asian states.
The book examines the drafting, nature, core values, and roles of the first modern constitutions during the founding of the 8 modern states/territories in Northeast Asia: China (1949), Taiwan (1947), Hong Kong SAR (1997), Macau SAR (1999), Japan (1889), North Korea (1948 and 1972), South Korea (1948), and Mongolia (1924).
The collection provides:
- an exploratory description of the process and substantive inputs in the making of the first constitutions of these nations/territories;
- analysis of the internal and external (including intra-regional) forces surrounding the making of these constitutions; and
- theoretical construction of models to conceptualise the nature and role of the first constitutions (including constituent documents) in the founding of the modern nation-states/territories and their subsequent impact on state-building in the region.
