Although the role of Buddhist monastics in shaping legal systems is seldom acknowledged, they have long acted as lawmakers, adjudicators and institutional actors across parts of Asia. In Courts, Constitutions and Karma, Ben Schonthal documents how Buddhist monastic communities have developed and maintained their own courts, constitutions and regulatory frameworks, while simultaneously engaging with colonial and modern state law.

Focusing on Sri Lanka from the nineteenth century to the present, the book explores how Buddhist monks, colonial administrators and contemporary lawmakers have negotiated the relationship between religious and secular law. Drawing on nearly a decade of archival research, ethnographic fieldwork and empirical analysis, Schonthal shows how these actors reconcile the “laws of the Buddha” with the “laws of the land” through everyday practices of legal pluralism.

Rather than presenting legal pluralism as a simple clash between competing legal orders, the study highlights the institutional practices and pragmatic strategies through which multiple normative systems are coordinated. By examining monastic legal institutions alongside state legal structures, the book illustrates how legal pluralism operates in practice and how it can produce both conflict and compromise.

Comparative in outlook and accessible in style, Courts, Constitutions and Karma offers valuable insights for scholars of law and society, legal anthropology, religious law and Asian legal history. It also contributes to broader debates about how societies manage multi-legality and the conditions under which plural legal orders coexist, compete or adapt.