The encounter with the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led some prominent thinkers in East Asia to painfully grapple with the questions of constitutional government and democratic self-government by embracing the discourse of rights and the political systems of Western origin in a way suitable in the local Confucian context. However, the seminal Confucian constitutional discourse did not see its full fruition due to various, often tragic, historical events, including civil wars and national divisions. In the end, the rise of modern states in the region, liberal democratic or communist, made the idea of Confucian constitutionalism completely obsolete in the public discourse, reinforcing the popular belief propagated by (liberal or socialist) elites that Confucianism was the single greatest obstacle to modernizing East Asian states and societies.

Confucian Constitutionalism: Dignity, Rights, and Democracy aims to overcome this widely held prejudice against Confucianism and its modern possibility by presenting a constitutional theory of democratic self-government that is normatively appealing and politically practicable in East Asian societies where people are still deeply soaked in Confucian values, mores, civilities, rituals, and moral sentiments, while subscribing to diverse moral, religious, and philosophical doctrines as private individuals. I present this novel normative theory of democratic self-government as “Confucian democratic constitutionalism,” at the core of which lies the constitutional dialogue between the legislature and the court for a cooperative search for democratic rights that are culturally meaningful and morally appealing in light of Confucian public reason, the shared reason of the democratic citizens who are embedded in Confucian civic culture. In marked contrast to Confucian meritocratic constitutionalism premised on an inegalitarian account of Confucian dignity and the service conception of political rights, thus affirming the hierarchy between the meritocratic upper house (or the select political elites unconstrained by the democratic control of the people) and the democratic lower house (or the people) based on virtue and knowledge, Confucian democratic constitutionalism is predicated on egalitarian Confucian dignity, which generates two foundational rights—the right to political participation, which undergirds the dignity of legislation, and the right to equal protection of civil and political rights, which justifies the authority of the judiciary.

Taking the East Asian reality of pluralism seriously, Confucian democratic constitutionalism is not geared toward strong perfectionism, guided by an outdated ambition to make the people “Confucians” in the full comprehensive moral sense. Rather, it aims to transform brute pluralism into reasonable pluralism by cultivating public-spirited democratic citizens who, despite moral and political disagreements among themselves, are willing to deliberate important public matters in light of their shared Confucian values, civilities, and moral sentiments. In Confucian democratic constitutionalism, therefore, public reason is not something that is rationally derived but understood chiefly as a civic quality that should be cultivated. Likewise, Confucian democratic constitutionalism does not understand rights (and the rule of law) as placed outside democratic politics. Rather, it regards them as the products of democratic decision-making, central to which is to render Western liberal rights meaningful in light of Confucian public reason, thereby making them Confucian democratic rights, and to enact law and public policy that can protect Confucian democratic rights and promote a Confucian democratic citizenship.