Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law. Edited by Tom Ginsburg and Benjamin Schonthal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 384. $125.00 (cloth); $125.00 (digital). ISBN: 9781009286046.

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law is a major achievement in the increasingly growing field of Buddhism and law.It is the first volume dedicated to understanding the entangled relationship between Buddhism and constitutional law.Under the meticulous editorship of Tom Ginsburg and Benjamin Schonthal, both of whom have been dedicated to the study of Buddhism and law for over a decade, this volume coherently assembles focused discussions on Buddhism and constitutional law by scholars in law, history, anthropology, Buddhist studies, and political science and whose writings cover a wide range of geographical locations: Bhutan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Japan, China, Vietnam, Inner Mongolia, and South Korea.This volume is not only a remarkable intellectual feast that scholars of religion, law, and Asia will find inspiring, but is also a truly valuable source for teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in these fields.The editors accomplished their goal of examining "the interactions of constitutional and Buddhist traditions in historical and contemporary Asia" (2).After a useful preface and an informative introduction, eighteen chapters unfold in four thematically arranged sections.In her preface, Rebecca Redwood French offers a useful account of the early development of the increasingly growing field of Buddhism and law.She provides a lively description of the first international conference on Buddhism and law at the Bellagio Center on Italy's Lake Como in 2006.French highlights how scholars at the conference paid attention to four concerning issues in the study of Buddhism and law.First, Buddhism was misunderstood to have no influence on the development of legal cultures in Asia.Second, the Buddhist monastic law code (Vinaya) was incorrectly considered not to be a law.Third, colonial powers in Asia "had discarded and 'disappeared' most secular Buddhist and Buddhistinfluenced law codes" (xiv).And fourth, Buddhism's influence on the legal systems in Asia was interpreted to be not religious, but cultural.In their introduction, Ginsburg and Schonthal paint a panoramic view of the latest development in the field of Buddhism and law and show how this volume, focusing on the intertwining between Buddhism and constitutional law, illuminates new directions for studying the legal dimension of Buddhism and the religious dimension of constitutional law.Collectively, the subsequent chapters in this volume demonstrate the "commonality and