Legal Innovations in Asia explores how law in Asia has developed over time as a result of judicial interpretation and innovations drawn from the legal systems of foreign countries. Expert scholars from around the world offer a history of law in the region while also providing a wider context for present-day Asian law. The contributors share insightful perspectives on comparative law, the role of courts, legal transplants, intellectual property, Islamic law and other issues as they relate to the practice and study of law in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia.

Law's Political Foundations explains the development of the two basic systems of public and private law and their historical transformations. Examining the historical development of law in China, Japan, Western Europe, and Hispanic America, Haley argues that law is a product, rather than a constitutive element, of political systems. Four narrative chapters commence with the development of Chinese legal tradition as a public law order in which regulatory and penal rules were central, compared to the primacy of private law in Western Europe. China was not only among the earliest but also...