Constitutional Statecraft in Asian Courts

Constitutional Statecraft in Asian Courts explores how courts engage in constitutional state-building in aspiring, yet deeply fragile, democracies in Asia. Yvonne Tew offers an in-depth look at contemporary Malaysia and Singapore, explaining how courts protect and construct constitutionalism even as they confront dominant political parties and negotiate democratic transitions.

This richly illustrative account offers at once an engaging analysis of Southeast Asia's constitutional context, as well as a broader narrative that should resonate in many countries across Asia that are also grappling with similar challenges of colonial legacies, histories of authoritarian rule, and societies polarized by race, religion, and identity.

The book explores the judicial strategies used for statecraft in Asian courts, including an analysis of the specific mechanisms that courts can use to entrench constitutional basic structures and to protect rights in a manner that is purposive and proportionate. Tew's account shows how courts in Asia's emerging democracies can chart a path forward to help safeguard a nation's constitutional core and to build an enduring constitutional framework.

Yvonne Tew, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
Yvonne Tew is an Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. She teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law and comparative constitutional law. Before joining the faculty at Georgetown, she was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School and a Hauser Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law. She has taught at the University of Cambridge, Columbia Law School, and the University of Malaya in Malaysia, and is an Attorney at Law in the State of New York.

Introduction
Part I: Rethinking Rights
1. False Dichotomies
2. Beyond "Asian Values"
Part II: A Framework for Constitutional Adjudication
3. The Need for a Constitutional Theory of Adjudication
4. Rethinking Originalism
5. The Rule of Law
6. The Separation of Powers
7. Revealing A Constitutional Minimum Core
Part III: Applying Theory to Practice
8. Religion, Secularism, and the State
9. Balancing Security and Liberty
Conclusion