Professor WILLIAM JAMES CLARK SMITH

The course offers students an opportunity to explore the important themes of human rights and constitutionalism in Greater China. As the only region without a regional human rights regime, Asia has relied more completely on domestic constitutionalism and legislative enactment to articulate and implement human rights commitments. This has often made the human rights debate a matter of local politics. In this respect, China has had a noteworthy engagement with some of the central
themes in the human rights debate, relating human rights to culture, to the political economy of development, democratization, international relations, and civil society. The course will explore these rich Chinese themes and efforts.