Buddhist Rules About Rules: Procedure and Process in the (Theravāda) Buddhist Legal System

This Article examines rules of procedure and process that structure the Buddhist legal system in the Theravāda tradition, the dominant tradition of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia. Drawing on important Buddhist texts written in Pāli as well as evidence from monastic legal practices in contemporary Sri Lanka, it argues that one can find within the Theravāda tradition a robust body of what H.L.A. Hart would call “secondary rules,” which determine how monks ought to apply prohibitions, manage disputes, and administer sanctions. These include detailed guidelines for making accusations, classifying legal cases, conducting hearings, settling disputes, examining litigants, evaluating evidence and witness testimony, appealing cases, prescribing penalties, and rehabilitating offenders. While these rules share similarities with other systems of state and religious law, Buddhist “rules about rules” not only ensure that disputes are settled properly but that the process of legal action itself both reflects and engenders favorable moral dispositions among monks. Underscoring both the similarities and differences between Buddhist law and other legal systems, this Article invites non-specialists to look (again) at the importance of Buddhist law—one of the oldest and most wide-spread systems of nonstate law—for the broader field of comparative legal studies, from which it has been largely absent.