Buddhism, Politics, and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka. By Benjamin Schonthal. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016.

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12290

This last point underscores Kawar’s focus on the significance of

lawyers’ framing of immigration-related issues. This is particularly

true in those states where human rights norms are explicitly invoked

by lawyers because of incorporation through domestic statute (such

as the UK’s Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European

Convention on Human Rights into British law) or national Constitu-

tion. In such national contexts, lawyers can frame domestic court

immigration litigation according to the human rights approach to

asylum law, which forces courts to examine immigration disputes

through a human rights lens. This raises an interesting empirical

question going forward: are the radiating effects different—and ulti-

mately more beneficial to noncitizens - when lawyers frame their

immigration advocacy in terms of international human rights law

rather than—as in the United States—a matter of domestic law.

One question which Kawar’s research suggests is whether there

is any difference between the radiating effects of litigation or other

legal advocacy on behalf of immigrants who have already entered

the country and thus have greater rights (at least in the United

States) and those who have been stopped at the border. One won-

ders whether litigation has been more or less effective in affecting

immigration in policy in either of these areas

In sum, Kawar’s book is both a methodologically rigorous

empirical study and an important source of context and perspective

for immigration advocates. It will encourage such advocates to

think about the radiating effects of their work, particularly at a time

of significant rollback of immigrant and refugee rights. In explor-

ing legal contestations as culturally productive processes, it can

enlighten and inspire lawyers, particularly in countries with isolated

or intimidated civil society actors.

***

Buddhism, Politics, and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic

Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka. By Benjamin Schonthal. New York:

Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016.

Reviewed by Nick Cheesman, Department of Political and Social

Change, Australian National University; and, Institute for Advanced

Study, Princeton

Buddhist monks have been newsworthy of late, not as practitioners

of a self-abnegating tradition but as proponents of religious nation-

alism. Groups like the Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka and MaBaTha

Book Reviews 741