Buddhism, Law & Society

Buddhism, Law & Society is the first interdisciplinary academic journal to focus on Buddhist law and the relationship between Buddhism, law, and society. Buddhism and its many social and legal manifestations are a central area of interest for the journal, as are the state’s legal relations to Buddhist actors, institutions, and texts.

The premise of this journal is that Buddhism affected the political and legal structures of the countries where it was practiced over the past 2,500 years and the countries where it is currently practiced. At the same time, the political and legal systems of those Asian countries also regulated and exerted control over Buddhist sanctuaries and Buddhist practitioners within their jurisdictions and often still do. This journal aims to pursue these relations and makes no assumption as to how large or small those effects are.

Buddhism, like all religious legal systems, has many internal particularist rules based on ideas that are central to Buddhism’s religious practices that may often seem strange to outsiders. Articles in this volume involve these internal rules, including whether or not a woman could reach enlightenment in this lifetime, rules pertaining to the desecration of Buddhist monuments, and more. Future volumes will also feature articles written from a wide variety of genres, theoretical orientations, languages, time periods and disciplinary traditions.

We invite articles on local community practices, jurisprudence, textual analysis, commentaries, legal subject matters, philosophy, procedure, ritual, ethics, law codes, social sanctions and other areas, both historical and current, as they relate to Buddhism and Law. We welcome submissions from legal practitioners as well as academics in a wide variety of disciplines in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Law.