This book explains how the idea and practice of unconstitutional constitutional amendments informs politics through various social and political actors, and in both formal and informal amendment processes. It is the first book-length study of the law and politics of unconstitutional constitutional amendments in Asia.

Rehan Abeyratne is Associate Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a co-editor of Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges (2021) as well as the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Asian Parliaments.

Ngoc Son Bui is Associate Professor of Asian Laws at the University of Oxford Faculty of Law. He is the author of Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World (2020) and Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia (Routledge, 2016).

Introduction

1. Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments as Constitutional Politics

Part I: Discursive Model

2. The Politics Of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment in Japan:The Case of The Pacifist Article 9
3. 'State Form' in the Theory and Practice of Constitutional Change in Modern China
4. Unconstitutional Constitution in Vietnamese Discourse

Part II: Denotive Model

5. The Law and Politics of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in Malaysia
6. Amending Constitutional Standards of Parliamentary Piety in Pakistan? Political and Judicial Debates
7. Limiting Constituent Power? Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments and Time-Bound Constitution Making in Nepal

Part III: Decisive Model

8. Beyond Unconstitutionality: The Public Oversights of Constitutional Revision in Taiwan
9. Thailand's Unamendability: Politics of Two Democracies
10. Constitutional Politics Over (Un)Constitutional Amendments: The Indian Experience
11. The Politics of Unconstitutional Amendment in Bangladesh

Part IV. Commentaries

12. The Power of Judicial Nullification in Asia and the World
13. Is the 'Basic Structure Doctrine' a Basic Structure Doctrine?
14. Eternity Clauses as Tools for Exclusionary Constitutional Projects
15. Why There? Explanatory Theories and Institutional Features Behind Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in Asia