This chapter recasts empire and its constitution and evolution to recover the most expansive of premodern interpolity systems and its charter. It outlines the evolution of the Mongol system, and provides a view of the empire and its dynastic imperium. It re-establishes the framework of the four Chinggisid Uluses as the main interstate system of the pre-modern world. While the Chinggisid törö governed inter-ruler relations, the Chinggisid jasaq formed the most potent laws that ensured the durability, uniformity and consistency of Chinggisid institutions and practices across the imperium. The 1640 Great Code presents an interpolity system, akin to and surpassing Westphalia and its charter, created within the Chinggisid political tradition and törö. Finally, the chapter uncovers one of the most consequential legacies of Chinggisid statecraft that formed the foundation of the modern state system and modern international order – the Chinggisid concept of ejen – the archetype of the concept that Bodin developed as sovereignty.

A popular belief in democracy as the core value of the Constitution has contributed to several innovations that circumvent the Framers’ constraints on democracy. Primary elections for selecting candidates including for the president have empowered the political parties and their core constituencies. The Supreme Court’s one-person-one-vote mandate for all state legislative elections has disempowered local communities, gerrymandering has become the norm for the creation of representative districts, and the 17th Amendment has diminished the influence of states as distinct political entities. Direct democracy in the form of referenda and initiative has compromised the filtering benefits of representation.

In drafting a constitution for the democratic republic of the United States, the Framers took elaborate measures to control the hazards of minority and majority political factions. The Framers’ conclusion that factions are inevitable is confirmed by the partisan nature of modern American politics.

It was a turning point in the history of European integration and a unique moment for the first President of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein. On 16 June 1965 in the afternoon, Hallstein appeared before the European Parliament (EP) to express his strong support for the constitutional interpretation of European law launched by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the new Van Gend en Loos (1963) and Costa v ENEL (1964) judgments. Here the ECJ had controversially assumed the competence to define the relationship between European law and national constitutional orders. By doing so the ECJ sidestepped the respective constitutional clauses of the member states on how to receive international (and European) law. Primary legal norms from the founding treaties, when clear and unambiguous, would have direct effect inside the legal order of the member states as well as primacy vis-à-vis national legislation, whether precedent or antecedent. This was a remarkable breakthrough for a constitutional interpretation of European law.

Chapter 5 looks at political communities in the making and historicises the notion of citizenship status during and after colonialism. In Ghana, citizenship criteria have evolved from a combination of jus soli and jus sanguinis principles to a purely jus sanguinis principle, as if to compensate for the porous nature of Ghana’s borders. This evolution shows a tendency to render citizenship more exclusionary, and more dependent on filiation and indigeneity, creating other boundaries within the nation. Yet the unsystematic and deficient systems of documentation prior and after independence cannot provide proof of one’s status with certainty. This is why new nations (such as Ghana) and local communities end up using the principle of indigeneity to prove their legitimacy to belong. This chapter suggests that indigeneity and citizenship constitute each other and that those who belong are those who can convince of the indigeneity of their ancestors. These narratives of indigeneity being prone to contestation, citizenship is at the same time at risk of being undermined. This implies that local belonging and citizenship can easily be conflated.

After the installation of a liberal constitution, the socialist tilt in the aftermath of independence challenged some of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, particularly the right to property, culminating in the removal of the right in the 1970s. Apart from noting the consequences of this, the chapter explores the effects of judicial hyperactivity manifest in public-interest litigation, as well as instances of overt judicial deference to the state. The other theme of the chapter follows the market orientation accompanying the 1991 economic liberalization, with the prominent challenge residing in the incapacity of the law and legal structures to govern long-term investment contracts. It is argued that the response – the creation of multiple regulatory bodies – resulted not only in fragmenting the law but also in raising generic social costs. The conclusion reinforces the narratives highlighted over the chapter by looking at arbitral awards imposed on India on account of international investment disputes.

How is monastic law practised in modern-day Sri Lanka? How do contemporary monastic jurists reckon with multi-legality? This chapter draws on archival and ethnographic research with Sri Lanka’s third-largest monastic community, the Rāmañña Nikāya, to answer these questions and explore the operation of monastic law today. It introduces readers to the Rāmañña constitution, court system, judicial training materials, jurisprudential texts and other features of monastic legal practice. It argues that monastic judges practise legal pluralism in ways that both resist and embrace the parallels between monastic and state law, engaging in a form of ‘double speak’ that, on the one hand, places monastic law ‘on the scale’ of Sri Lankan law while, at the same time, highlighting its superior, more-than-human status.

How should scholars and policymakers think about legal pluralism? In this Conclusion, I reflect on that topic, insisting that analysts should move beyond the question of whether laws, themselves, are or are not compatible. Instead, they should look at the practices of legal pluralism that make such compatibility seem natural or permissible, exceptional or impossible. I argue that inter-legal harmony is not a technical feat, but a social, political, and emotional achievement – one that is often precarious. Legal pluralism, therefore, implicates more than just the ‘stuff’ of law, but involves the shifting and recursive processes that help us to assemble normative worlds, reckon with diverse obligations, and find meaningful pathways forward through a changing and complex life.

Abraham Lincoln turned his attention to reconstructing the damaged union very early in the war, and tried several different experiments in recreating civilian governments in confederate states where federal authority had been re-established. He encountered his greatest difficulty in dealing with unionist factions in those states, and with a radical caucus within congress which pressed for more vigorous treatment of the former slave states. Lincoln was inclined to operate on the most generous possible terms to end the fighting. But he also declined overtures from confederates that would in any way compromise the commitment to emancipation and the end of slavery in America.

Sri Lanka is the only Buddhist-majority country in the world without an official state-recognised monastic legal system. This is in spite of the fact that an entire section of the county’s constitution is dedicated to such a venture. How can one explain this? And why does Sri Lanka remain in this impasse? This chapter answers these questions by tracking a significant (and ongoing) series of attempts made by Sri Lanka’s leading intellectuals, educators, politicians, monks and legislators to ‘legalise’ monastic law (S: nītīgata kirīma) by creating some form of statute, tribunal or legal body that could blend monastic and state legal authority. Drawing on an un- and under-studied body of political and legal documents, it explains how a particular approach to legal pluralism – one motivated by a ‘purist’ approach to law – both motivated and sabotaged successive efforts to formally recognise monastic courts and constitutions in state law.

What is monastic law for? This chapter explores the goals of monastic law, beyond its concerns with regulation and governance. Drawing on ethnographic, archival and survey research, it examines the various ‘nonpositivist’ aims pursued by monastic jurists: preserving unity and unanimity (sāmaggi) among monks; maintaining discretion and protecting reputations; avoiding (further) conflict and identifying the root causes of strife; minimising judicial prejudice by eliminating the mental defilements (kilesa) that give rise to them; restoring offenders to the community by applying therapeutic sanctions; aligning the conduct of monks with the concerns of local laity and temple donors; and, most importantly, shortening saṃsāra and hastening nirvana. This chapter highlights the intertwining of positivist and nonpositivist elements in monastic law, shining light on a legal order that not only enforces standards of conduct but also impacts karma, saṃsāra and the path to nirvana.

Abraham Lincoln entered onto the presidency even as the breakaway southern confederacy was in the process of detaching itself from the union. Lincoln undestood this as a defiance of the constitution and an undermining of democracy (as represented by the election of 1860) and he initiated war measures to suppress what he would recognize only as a rebellion. He was careful not to agitate public opposition by billing this suppression as an abolition campaign. Nevertheless, union forces met with repeated defeats, and Lincoln was frustrated by over-mighty generals who believed that they knew better than he what was at stake. This frustration nudged him further toward incorporating some form of abolition into his war plans.

What is Buddhist monastic law? How should one think about its key texts, institutions and principles? This chapter answers these questions in the context of Sri Lanka and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, focusing especially on ideas of unity and diversity in law. The first part of this chapter summarises key ideas and principles found in the ancient code of monastic law, the Vinaya Piṭaka, which is thought to be the cornerstone of monastic legal texts and practices. The second (longer) part of this chapter introduces readers to a range of monastic legal sources outside the Vinaya Piṭaka, which also play key roles in the practice of monastic law in contemporary Sri Lanka. These sources include commentaries, constitutions, handbooks, judicial manuals, statutes, case law, social expectations and other normative sources produced by monks, state officials and Buddhist laypersons.