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Constitutional Foundings in Southeast Asia
The ‘Constitutional Foundings in Southeast Asia’ workshop was organised by the Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS) on 9 and 10 November 2017 at NUS Law. Convened by Adjunct Professor Kevin Tan ’86 (Principal Investigator) and Senior Research Fellow Dr Bui Ngoc Son (Co-Investigator), this workshop discussed the ‘first’ or foundational constitutions of the ten ASEAN states and East Timor.
Over one-and-a-half days, participants engaged in thought-provoking discussions enquiring into: (1) the process and debates in the making of the constitutions; (2) internal factors (colonialism, socio-economic condition, political struggle, intellectual environment, religion, and tradition), and external factors (foreign constitutions, foreign governments, international law, and international actors) of the foundational constitution-making; and (3) the historical and current effects of the foundational constitutions.
By focusing on jurisdictions in Southeast Asia, this workshop sought to enrich existing scholarship on constitutional history with thick accounts of under-examined jurisdictions and to contribute to the development of comparative constitutional history generally.