Panel 1: China
Title: “Confucianism” and Legality in Qing China
Speaker: Taisu Zhang (Yale University)
Abstract: This essay explores the possible connections between Confucian thought and various features of the Qing legal system. A wide array of scholarship has, over the past several decades, portrayed the Qing system as one of numerous internal tensions: it both rhetorically denounced litigation and coexisted easily with a thriving legal profession; its bureaucrats produced a great amount of technocratic legal interpretation, and yet openly aspired to more moralistic modes of adjudication and legal comprehension. All this suggests a system that was nominally Confucian in ideology, but pragmatically legalistic in actual operation. At best, it seems rather cynical, at worst, it feels fundamentally incoherent. This essay argues, however, that these “tensions” need not be seen as real tensions if we adopt a different understanding of Qing political thought: by the 18th Century, elites were broadly committed to a small-state ideology that actively delegated wide swathes of administrative power, including dispute resolution power, to local communities. The material realities of the Qing state largely matched and reinforced this ideology. Both sides of the “tension” described above logically flow from such an ideological worldview.
Legalizing and Legitimizing the Use of Animal Bones in Chinese Buddhism
Speaker: Chen, Huaiyu (Arizona State University)
Abstract: Unlike many other parts of animal bodies, animal bones are permitted to be partially used in four requisites of Buddhist daily life, according to some traditions of monastic codes. Besides the Buddha’s bone relics being honored, the Buddhist law and rules seem to legitimize human and animal bones as material resources for Buddhist clothing, medicine, and ritual performance. With the spread of Buddhism, the Buddhist approaches to animal bones were gradually shaped by numerous issues, such as local adaptations, material challenges, and competition from non-Buddhist religious traditions. This study examines what continuations and transformations about authorizing and legalizing the use of animal bones could be found in medieval Chinese Buddhism and how Chinese Buddhists interpreted and justified these continuations and transformations against the indigenous background of Chinese medical culture.
Temple in Flux: Property, Gender, and Temple Transfer in Qing China (1644-1912)
Speaker: Chen, Gilbert (Townsend University)
Abstract: This paper investigates a rarely discussed topic in Chinese religious history: temple transfer. Conventionally, scholars assume that religious properties in late imperial China were inalienable and that the state cracked down on the illegal sale of temple property. Drawing on the Ba County Archives, this paper documents the frequency of the practice at the local level. Frequently, clerics transferred or blatantly sold their residential temples to other clerics and sometimes even laypeople, largely due to economic difficulties. Despite its frequency, the practice was nevertheless prone to generate tremendous anxiety among clerics and laypeople. In the paper, I focus on a well-documented legal case in which a Buddhist nun’s purchase of a temple backfired and entangled her in a prolonged legal battle with other clerics and lay community leaders. I’ll argue how religious status empowered Chinese women to exercise property rights that, in normal circumstances, were unavailable to them. Nevertheless, the exercise of such rights was susceptible to tension and conflict in a society with a strong anticlerical tradition.
Panel 2: The Mongols and the Burmese
Law and Religion in the Adjudication of Marriage Disputes in China under Mongol Rule (1260-1368)
Speaker: Bettine Birge (University of Southern California)
Abstract: When the Mongols invaded China in the thirteenth century and founded the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), they faced the challenge of governing a diverse, poly-ethnic empire made up of people with different languages, religions, and legal traditions. From early on, litigation over marriage emerged as an area of conflict between people practicing different religions. This paper looks at two legal cases involving practitioners of Islam and how the legal system of the Mongol-Yuan dynasty addressed differences between Islamic law and traditional Confucian legal practice. In the first case, the imperial courts allowed a system of legal pluralism, whereby an Islamic cleric, a qadi, was brought in to adjudicate the lawsuit according to Islamic law. In the second, a young woman challenges her forced marriage to a Muslim trader on the grounds that she is not herself Muslim and therefore not eligible by Islamic law to be married to her Muslim spouse.
Clergies and Religion households on the Jarghu (Mongol Inquisition): Embodied Prayer for Great Qans and Legal and Physical Autonomy
Speaker: Seol, Paehwan (Chonnam National University, South Korea; Harvard Yenching Institute)
Abstract: This paper examines the pious and legal dynamism of clergies and religious believers on the jarghu, or Mongol inquisition in the 13th to the 14th centuries. Previous studies claim that the yuehui 約會 was a unique institution in the Yuan dynasty which first began in 1261, 1265, or 1292. It is believed that the yuehui was an institution which respected different legal traditions of various [ethnic or religious] groups and acknowledged their “legal autonomy” according to the practice of “rule by custom” (yinsu er zhi 因俗而治). There is no Mongolian word that is known to indicate the yuehui. The Chinese yuehui was a “joint trial” in which legal matters were jointly judged, decided, and concluded. The yuehui was a Chinese translation of the jarghu. The prototype of the ǰarγu emerged in the period of Chinggis Qan. From the 1260s, this was inherited by the yuehui of Yuan China and Goryeo Korea. The paper traces legal cases and ligation where clergies and believers were engaged with the Mongol authorities on lawsuits and finds their legal and social status in political and economic justice of the Mongols. This study also challenges legal or cultural (religious) relativism in the yuehui.
What is in a judgement? From canonical self-regulation to military control in Burmese Theravada
Speaker: Kate Crosby (Oxford University)
Abstract: This paper examines the development of vinicchaya, the basic meaning of which is ‘judgement’, but which can also refer to a modern-style ‘court case’. The term vinicchaya is found in the section of the Pali canon that regulates monastic conduct (Vinaya). It refers to assessing the presence or absence of each of five factors to determine the guilt or innocence of a monk or nun in relation to the monastic rules. This form of assessing monastic discipline has remained an internal affair, judged by monks themselves within the monastery, throughout the history of Theravada Buddhism and continues to this day. At the same time, high profile royal intervention in the affairs of the Sangha, ostensibly at the request of the Sangha itself, especially by the 3rd-century BCE emperor Ashoka and the 18th-century Burmese king Bodawpaya, created a precedent for temporal powers to intervene in monastic affairs. During the British colonial period in Myanmar, the term vinicchaya came to be applied to subjects more broad than monastic rules as rival Buddhist monks sought to preserve the understanding of Buddhists teachings as well as the practice of the monastic code from the corruption that they feared would engulf it. With Independence, U Nu, in emulation of Ashoka and Bodawpaya, sought to unify the Sangha by enabling it to conduct vinicchaya with the backing of the state. Imprisonment was imposed as a penalty for non-compliance. The scheme was initially disrupted by the military coup but then revived three decades later, with teachings now more commonly the subject of scrutiny than practice. This paper will look at the factors that contributed to this transformation of vinicchaya, unique to Myanmar, and comment on how it has continued in recent years, following the reimposition of military rule.
Panel 3: Japan
Lawful Meditation: Naikan and How the Japanese Constitution Incentivized Its Secularization
Speaker: Clark Chilson (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract: In 1946 American occupying forces drafted a new constitution for Japan. Article 20 in it was intended to guaranteed freedom of religion and prevent the state from using religion to promote its objectives, as Japan had done during World War II. Yet, ironically, constitutional guarantees of religious freedom led to restrictions on religion, particularly in the public sphere. We see this in the history of Naikan meditation, which was used to rehabilitate prisoners in the 1950s. Naikan was founded by Yoshimoto Ishin (1916-1988), who developed it from a Pure Land Buddhist practice. He introduced Naikan to prisons as a Buddhist chaplain, but some wardens were concerned that their prisons as publicly funded institutions could not legally support it. So Yoshimoto secularized Naikan to make it more acceptable. Overall, the paper argues that the law can incentivize the secularization of religious practices.
Religious freedom in pluralist Japan: The SDF Enshrinement case and the balancing of rights of religious communities
Speaker: Ernils Larsson (TBD)
Abstract: This paper uses the Self Defence Forces (SDF) Enshrinement case, resolved by the Japanese Supreme Court in 1988, to highlight the difficulties inherent in legally defining the category of religion in a country where the concept has a contested history. The paper considers both the multitude of religious groups coexisting in postwar Japan, and the many divergent ideas about how religion should be understood. By doing so, it questions the oft-cited notion that the ruling was an infringement of the plaintiff’s religious freedom or that it reflected a return of “State Shinto,” instead arguing that it should primarily be read as an attempt made by the justices to balance the right to religious freedom of several inherently different actors. Rather than focusing on how the plaintiff in the case, the deceased serviceman’s widow, was Christian, the paper emphasizes the fact that he himself was described as having had “no religion.”
Title: The Politics of Dissolution: The Unification Church in Japan after the Abe Assassination
Speaker: Levi McLaughlin (NC State University)
Abstract: On October 13th, 2023, the Japanese government ordered the legal dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the Korea-based religion best known as the Unification Church (UC). This presentation outlines potential ramifications of current disputes in Japan’s courts over removal of the church’s religious juridical persons status, which involve unprecedented applications of Japanese civil law triggered by the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in July 2022. Dissolution of the UC may portend a new era for Japan’s fraught religio-political order as it lays bare tensions that all religious organizations in the country must navigate.
Panel 4: Tibet
Monks and Nuns Behaving Badly: Disciplinary Measures in Tibetan Buddhist and Bonpo Communities of Highland Nepal in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Speaker: Charles Ramble (EPHE – PSL University, CRCAO, Paris)
Abstract: Most Tibetan monasteries and convents have sets of rules, called cayik (bca’-yig), that regulate the conduct of their members. Our knowledge about these protocols has advanced considerably in recent years thanks to the work of scholars such as Berthe Jansen. But rules are one thing, and their implementation is quite another, and we still know relatively little about how regulations were actually enforced. Fortunately, the archives of Himalayan Tibetan communities record cases of misdemeanours by monks, nuns and other religious specialists, such as tantric lamas. Such documents, mainly from the nineteenth century, catalogue the transgressions that were committed and the punitive measures taken. The evidence indicates that penalties were remarkably light in comparison to the draconian measures for violations in other parts of Tibet, suggesting, perhaps, that a relatively tolerant attitude towards human fallibility was considered to be more conducive to the interests of the community than strict adherence to principle.
The Yogic Practice of Buddha Amitābha at the Moment of Death: A Fine Blend of the Sūtric and Tantric Practice of Mahayana Buddhism
Speaker: Weirong Shen (Tsinghua University)
Abstract: The Secret Collection of Works on the Essential Path of Mahayana contains a brief tantric ritual text titled The Essential Instruction on the Practice of Buddha Amitabha at the Moment of Death. Unlike many other tantric practices of the deity yoga the fundamental basis of this ritual text lies in the ten great vows and practices of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. The purpose of this practice is to guide sentient beings towards liberation and attain rebirth within the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. The form of the practices within this ritual closely adheres to the yogic practice of the supreme yoga tantra. Consequently, this ritual text can be seen as a synthesis of exoteric and esoteric approaches to deity meditation. Highlighting the dual nature of this practice, I argue that we cannot use the Vinaya precepts in the Theravāda Tradition to deny the legitimacy of practices in the Mahāyāna tradition, nor using precepts in the exoteric traditions to evaluate or deny the legitimacy of practices in the esoteric/Tantric tradition.
The Peacock’s Poison: Clerical Immunity in Tibetan Buddhism
Speaker: Cuilan Liu (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract: Benefit of Clergy is a legal privilege, officially recognized in the 12th century but abolished in the 19th Century in England, that allows Christian clerics to avoid trials in the King’s Court. In this paper, I will discuss how Buddhists in Asia have developed a discourse for a similar set of clerical legal privileges for ordained monks and nuns. In particular, this paper highlights how Buddhist writers in Tibet, from all the four major traditions of Bka’ ‘gyur, Rnying ma, Dge lugs, and Sa skya, have demonstrated lasting engagement with this Buddhist discourse for clerical immunity from the 12th century to the early 20th century.
Panel 5: Beyond Asia
Abdul Maalik Muhammad: A Prisoner Pursuing Divine Justice
Speaker: Spearlt (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract: This talk traces the legal trajectory of Gregory Holt, aka Abdul Maalik Muhammad, through his Supreme Court case Holt v. Hobbs (2015), where he triumphed in a suit to be allowed to wear a half-inch beard. His victory laid a national rule for all held in state or federal detention facilities. For Muslims, the case settled an issue that had been litigated for decades across state and federal jurisdictions; for Muslim and non-Muslim inmates alike, the decision provided a sold precedent that would be a cornerstone case for pursuing greater religious freedom; for me, the researcher, this case and individual helped me to recognize that for some in prison, suing in court is a form of spiritual activism, and is often grounded in one’s “duty” as a Muslim. I term this phenomenon Muslim “litigiosity,” by which individuals like Holt express faith through the will to litigate.
The Fatwa Function of a Domestic Violence Prevention Manual
Speaker: Yasmine Flodin-Ali (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract: My paper examines Islamic Marriage Contracts, a manual published in 2012 by the Peaceful Families Project, a non-profit devoted to ending domestic violence in Muslim American communities. This document aims to reach four categories of people: legal professionals, advocates, imams, and families. One of the three organizations that co-sponsored this manual’s production is the Asian and Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, speaking to the large portion of Muslim Americans who are also Asian American. The document provides an overview of both Islamic family law and American family law, and then analyzes how those two sets of systems interact. Drawing upon Kecia Ali’s Sexual Ethics, I argue that this manual is itself a piece of Islamic law, and functions as a fatwa, or Islamic legal opinion, demonstrating that in an American context Islamic law has been grafted onto an ethical and relational framework, with minimal interaction with state-sanctioned law systems.
Buddhist Inmates and Litigation in the US
Speaker: Dannial T. Cardillo (University of Pittsburgh)
Abstract: This presentation summarizes the motivations that Buddhists in the US prison system have had for filing lawsuits in the past fifteen years and their outcomes. Notably, restrictions on Buddhist diet, clothing, scriptures, and religious services have instigated the majority of Buddhist inmates’ decisions to litigate and appeal rejections to their requests. However, I will also analyze instances in which Buddhist converts appeal for reduced sentences on the basis of good behavior and their newly found religious piety. This presentation will then examine whether there is legal precedence for reductions in sentencing among appeals made by members of other religious traditions.
Cuilan Liu 