News
French in India on Fulbright fellowship
UB Law School faculty member Rebecca R. French is spending the next six months in New Delhi, India, as a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher, furthering her landmark research on Buddhist legal traditions.
Supported by the Fulbright Scholar Program and hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, French is continuing her work on a project titled “The Buddha’s Theory of Secular Law.”
An expert in Tibetan law, French has spearheaded the development of the new discipline of law and Buddhism, and organized the first international conferences and working groups in this area. She previously has spent time in India, conducting research on Buddhism and the law in the Tibetan community there.
French said her project counters the view that Buddhism presents only a religious philosophy.
“My research has shown that the Buddha and his tradition had a very significant influence on secular law,” she said before leaving for India, adding that she plans to spend her time there talking with scholars, conducting archival research and collecting local materials.
“The result of this project will be a book that will provide a more nuanced understanding of legal ideas during the Buddha’s life, his approach to monastic and secular legal problems, the central texts that present his legal theories and the legal policies of the first Buddhist empire in India,” she explained. “This will set a foundation for a new subdiscipline and add Buddhism to the world’s major legal traditions.”
French joined the UB Law School in 2001 after serving on the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Law, where she conducted the research for her groundbreaking book “The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet.” The book was an outgrowth of her interest in Asian legal systems and her experience at Yale University, where she earned both a master of laws degree and a doctorate in anthropology. A philosophy major as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, she earned her JD from the University of Washington Law School. She served for three years as a public defender and four years in general practice in the Pacific Northwest.
French was instrumental in bringing the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of the Tibetan Buddhist community, to the UB Law School in September 2006 for the first discussion and conference with the Dalai Lama on Law, Buddhism and Social Change.
Among her most recent work is “The Cambridge Companion to Law and Buddhism,” forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, the first comprehensive volume on the topic. French served as editor of the publication.
Reader Comments