Department of Political and Social Change Seminar Series
Regimes of religious law appear widely across Asia, but are often described as artefacts, even inventions, of colonial power. Just how artificial are they? And what about Buddhist law? This talk reflects on these questions from colonial Ceylon/Sri Lanka through the lens of legal texts written by Buddhist monks. It looks at the world of saffron-robed lawmakers, judges and courts and their interactions with state law, past and the present.
Speaker
Benjamin Schonthal is Professor and Head of the Religion Programme and Affiliate Professor in Law at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where he also co-directs the Otago Centre for Law & Society. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has held visiting positions at Northwestern University, the Institute for Advanced Studies (Bielefeld) and the Law School at the University of Chicago. His research examines how religion, law and politics intersect in South and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law (CUP, 2016) and co-editor of Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law (CUP, 2023, with Tom Ginsburg). His current book, forthcoming with Cambridge Studies in Law and Society, is called The Laws of the Buddha and the Laws of the Land: Monastic Law, State Law and the Practices of Legal Pluralism in Sri Lanka.
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