About this Event
About the Event
The new book, From Manners to Rules: Advocating for Legalism in South Korea and Japan (Cambridge, 2025), challenges the conventional wisdom that law and courts play marginal roles in Korean and Japanese politics. Through paired comparisons of recent reforms related to disability rights and tobacco control, Professor Celeste Arrington documents the emergence of legalistic approaches to governance in the hard cases of Korea and Japan, where governance was previously characterized by nonbinding measures, bureaucratic discretion, and malleable, vague laws that couldn’t be used in court. Whereas existing studies of legalism or the broader judicialization of politics elsewhere tend to emphasize top-down or structural factors, this new book reveals how activists and lawyers contribute from the bottom up to a more legalistic regulatory style by demanding and using more formal, detailed, and enforceable rules and participatory policy processes. This legalistic turn is reshaping the who and the how of policy design and implementation and transforming citizens options for political participation in East Asia's main democracies. The comparative research draws on 120 interviews and diverse documents from advocacy groups, court cases, and government bodies. This talk will present the book's main argument with evidence related to disability-based discrimination and accessibility for people with disabilities in Korea and Japan.
Book link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-manners-to-rules/F68A14FC5E643B2FE1DF3708EDAD4D79
About the Author
Celeste Arrington is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She is the Director of the GW Institute for Korea Studies. She is also a Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. Her comparative research examines public policy, law and social change, lawyers, and governance, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Other research interests include Northeast Asian security, North Korean human rights, and transnational activism. Her first book was Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Governmental Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell, 2016). She has published numerous articles and, with Patricia Goedde, she co-edited Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge, 2021). Her newest book, published in 2025 in Cambridge’s Studies in Law and Society series, is entitled From Manners to Rules: Advocating for Legalism in South Korea and Japan. It analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese regulatory style through paired case studies related to tobacco control and disability rights. She received a PhD from UC Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Princeton University. She has been a fellow at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. GW’s Office of the Vice President for Research awarded her the 2021 Early Career Research Scholar Award. Her article with Claudia Kim won the 2023 Asian Law and Society Association’s distinguished article award. She is working on projects related to memory laws in South Korea and civic engagement among people with disabilities in Japan and Korea.
About the Moderator
Professor Bruce Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993.
Professor Dickson’s research and teaching focus on political dynamics in China, especially the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it governs. In addition to courses on China, he also teaches on comparative politics and authoritarianism.
His current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving strategy for survival, and the changing relationship between state and society. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lindner Commons, 602, 1957 E Street NW, Washington, United States
USD 0.00
