Search results

AbstractThis Special Issue highlights the most recent socio-legal research related to the mitigation, if not the elimination, of the threat of anthropogenic disasters in Asia and beyond. The drafts of these papers were originally presented at the Presidential Session on "The Anthropocene and the Law in Asia" at the Fourth Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) Conference held in the vibrant city of Osaka, Japan in December 2019. The timing of this particular session, the first of its kind to be held at an ALSA Conference, turned out to be somewhat prophetic, in that two anthropogenic catastrophes—the historic zoonotic pandemic and the cataclysmic wild bushfires—had just begun to strike in December in Wuhan, China and in New South Wales, Australia, respectively. The novel coronavirus pandemic would kill more than 1 million people in the following months, after infecting more than 40 million across the globe. The Australian wild bushfires killed and displaced more than 3 billion animals, becoming the worst wildfire ever recorded in the world. Since that last ALSA Conference in December 2019, multiple anthropogenic disasters have hit various regions in Asia and across the world. The papers in this Special Issue examine various impacts of anthropogenic disasters and propose innovative socio-legal strategies to mitigate them. Included are arguments for the proposal of new legal education curricula and innovative pedagogy on environmental law and the exploration of an international multidisciplinary teaching framework in reconsidering and reshaping human-centric legal education. Also proposed is the development of a robust Earth Jurisprudence based on the adoption of the Rights of Nature principles, while moving away from the Euro-American exploitive view of nature as commodified properties. Additionally proposed is the establishment of a land-based, topological jurisprudence that incorporates the nuanced narratives of indigenous voices in dealing with the threat of human-induced ecological and environmental disasters in the years ahead.

AbstractA new paradigmatic shift in confronting the climactic endgame of the Anthropocene in Asia is in order. Scientific studies warned that Asia would become the epicentre of anthropogenic catastrophes and environmental disasters in the world. As the outgoing Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) president, I wish to contribute to critical discussions on two issues: (1) Earth Jurisprudence and (2) the Rights of Nature. These legal concepts must be critically examined, discussed, and developed by socio-legal researchers and policy-makers in order to avert the impending crises of the Anthropocene in Asia. This report examines the recent development of a robust movement toward Earth Jurisprudence in multiple countries of Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific—that is, countries that have recently enshrined the concept of the Rights of Nature into their legal system through transforming nature into rights-bearing entities in order to protect them from harmful human activities. Failing any significant remedial measures, many Asian cities, shores, and coastlines, including the archipelagos of multiple island states in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean may soon disappear due to the many decades of egregious human activities of industrialized countries and the corporate world. A robust system of Earth Jurisprudence must be established, in which the Rights of Nature must be imbedded in the centre of legislative and constitutional discussions and deliberations.

AbstractHistorical tensions and conflicts have existed between the nation and the state across the globe for centuries. These antithetical geo-political entities have also erected Constitutions of their own to assert their sovereignty and independence. The paper then explores the constitutional activism by the nation to attain its sovereignty and the right to self-determination from the state supervision. The paper specifically interrogates recent efforts by the Nation of Lakota in North America, and its constitutional activism and the attempts to secede from the US jurisdiction in order to declare the nation's independence. The paper provides the critical investigation of an array of both domestic and international laws used by the Nation of Lakota in order to complete the withdrawal of its political ties and legal obligation from the US territory. The paper concludes by discussing the ongoing constitutional activism by multiple nations in Asia and other regions of the world in an effort to attain their sovereignty and independence within, and even beyond, the respective state systems.

AbstractSince the first Asian Law and Society Conference (ALSA) was held at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2016, a number of special sessions have been organized to focus on the deconstruction of the Westphalian transnational order based on the concept of the "nation-state."1 This dominant hegemony was predicated on the congruence of the geo-territorial boundaries of both the state and the nation, as well as the "assumed integration" of state-defined "citizenship" and another distinctly layered "membership" based on culture, ethnic, religious, and indigenous affiliations. The "nation-state" ideology has thus masked a history of tensions and conflicts, often manifested in the form of oppression, persecution, and genocide directed at the nation and its peoples by the state and its predatory institutions. Our studies have shown that such conflicts between the nation and the state have been observed in multiple regions in Asia, including Kashmir in India; Moro and Islamic communities of Mindanao in the Philippines; Karen, Kachin, and other autonomous nations in Myanmar; West Papua, Aceh, Kalimantan, South Moluccas, Minahasa, and Riau in Indonesia; Kurds in multiple state systems of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran; and Palestine in Israel, among many other culturally autonomous nucleated communities in Asia and across the world.2 The phrase "the nation and the state" was specifically chosen to distinguish and highlight the unique conflictual histories of two geo-political entities and to provide a fundamentally differing interpretation of history, geography, the role of law, and global affairs from the perspectives of nation peoples, rather than from that of the state or international organizations, as traditional analyses do. The Westphalian "nation-state" hegemony led to the inviolability of the state's sovereign control over the nation and peoples within a state-delimited territory. The state then began to engage in another predatory project: to strengthen and extend its international influence over other states and, thus, the nations within these states, by adopting new constitutional provisions to offer cross-border "citizenship" to diasporic "ethnic-nationals" and descendants of "ex-migrants" who now inhabit foreign states. The nations have similarly capitalized on constitutional activism by erecting their own Constitutions to explore collaboration with other nations, as well as diasporic populations of their own, in order to carve out a path toward the nations' independence within, and even beyond, the respective state systems. The "constitutional" activism sought by the state and the nation has become an important political vehicle with which to engage in possible collaboration with diasporic "ethno-nationals" and ex-migrant communities, in order to further assert political influence and strengthen trans-border politics of the state and the nation. Three articles included in this issue investigate such constitutional activism of cross-border politics and transnational collaborations in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and other regions across the globe.