The Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law, named for Bhutan’s fourth King, recently opened with the goal of producing lawyers who reflect Bhutan’s unique Buddhist traditions and philosophies. The need for Bhutanese lawyers arose as a result of the country’s 2008 constitution and establishment of a democratic government after the King’s earlier transition to a constitutional monarchy, despite public preference for an absolute monarch.
UVic Law professor and Director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) Victor V. Ramraj became interested in the school after reading about its opening in a 2016 article in the New York Times. Ramraj, whose interests include comparative constitutional and administrative law, quickly became interested in the school and reached out to Michael Peil, the school’s Vice-Dean, to discuss the potential of a scholarly exchange program.
Funding for such a program was approved in 2017 through the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advance Scholars (QES-AS) Scholarships program. The program has facilitated the travel of scholars between Victoria and Bhutan, including one of JSW’s senior lecturers, Nima Dorji, now a PhD candidate at the UVic Faculty of Law studying the Bhutanese constitution and concept of Gross National Happiness.
See the UVic Law site for more details on the project, or explore a selection of UVic library resources related to Bhutanese and comparative law here:
Databases
- Find Bhutan’s constitution in the Oxford Constitutions of the World or HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated.
- Search articles related to Bhutan in the HeinOnline Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP)
- Learn more about Bhutan’s legal system on GlobaLex
Books
- Daniel J. Kapust & Helen M. Kinsella, eds, Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place: Theory’s Landscapes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Ebook.
- Sunil Khilnani, Vikram Raghavan & Arun K. Thiruvengadam, eds, Comparative Constitutionalism in South Asia (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2016). Law Library, KNC524 C64 2016.
- Werner Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa, 2nd ed (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Law Library, K559 M46 2006.
- Michel Rosenfeld & András Sajó, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, 1st ed (Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 2012). Ebook.
- Reinhard Zimmermann & Mathias Reimann, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Law Library, K48 O96 2008.
Journal Articles
- Mathew Ferraro, “Stateless in Shangri-La minority rights, citizenship, and belonging in Bhutan” (2012) 48:2 Stan J Intl L 405.
- Darius Lee, “Here There Be Dragons! Buddhist Constitutionalism in the Hidden Land of Bhutan” (2014) 15:1 Austl J Asian L 1.
- Alessandro Simoni & Richard Whitecross, “Gross National Happiness and the Heavenly Stream of Justice: Modernization and Dispute Resolution in the Kingdom of Bhutan” (2007) 55:1 Am J Comp L 165.
- Richard Whitecross, “Separation of Religion and Law?: Buddhism, Secularism and the Constitution of Bhutan” (2007) 55:2 Buff L Rev 707.
- Susan Walcott, “One of a Kind: Bhutan and the Modernity Challenge” (2011) 13:3 National Identities 253.