The Collaborative Research Network 33 on East Asian Law and Society (CRN33) of the Law and Society Association (LSA)Footnote 1 has organized sessions based on the general themes of the LSA annual meetings since 2017. The general theme of the 2019 LSA annual meeting was “Dignity.” The theme was explained as follows:
Dignity embraces justice, rights, rule of law, respect for humanity and diversity as well as a commitment to human engagement, subjects that have been central in the law and society tradition. Dignity is a core idea in many different legal traditions and is shaped by a variety of struggles. It provides a bridge across cultures intersecting with diverse values and identities. Recognizing this central idea as our theme when we meet this year in Washington D.C.—at a moment of social anxiety and global uncertainty—focuses our attention on the promise, values and unrealized potential of dignity and will highlight the role of values we examine law in society. The 2019 Law and Society Annual Meeting will initiate our consideration of the place, role and visions of dignity through a number of mini-plenary sessions that will take up the idea in its different forms.Footnote 2
As an Executive Member of the CRN33, I circulated a call for papers to its members for a session on “Dignity in East Asian Law and Society.” Eight papers were accepted, including seven single-authored papers and one co-authored paper. I divided them into two sessions: “Dignity in East Asian Law and Society (1)” and “Dignity in East Asian Law and Society (2).” Each session had four papers and I recruited a discussant for each of them. These sessions were held on 1 June 2019 and I chaired both. I invited all the presenters and discussants to submit their papers to the Asian Journal of Law and Society. Ultimately, two papers were submitted: Terence C. Halliday and Sida Liu, “Dignity Discourses in China’s Struggles for Basic Legal Freedoms,” and Qian Liu, “Relational Dignity, State Law, and Chinese Leftover Women’s Choices in Marriage and Childbearing.” Furthermore, one of the discussants, Amy Huey-Ling Shee, also submitted a paper, “Construction of Socio-Legal Dignity for Old Persons: Narrative Perspectives from Taiwan.” These three papers respectively discuss “dignity” in relation to such critical issues as cause lawyering, women, and the elderly, and I believe that they deserve publication in the AJLS to enrich the socio-legal literature on law and society in Asia.
