Chapter 3 links context-dependent choice with what has recently been called in economics the “reconciliation problem” between positive and normative economics, and argues that efforts to solve that problem have led to a number of different strategies for reconstructing economics’ individual conception. It first reviews the mainstream’s “inner rational agent” attempt to preserve Homo economicus and then contrasts two broad strategies for reconstructing economics’ individual conception based on opposing views of individual autonomy: an “internalist” view that makes it depend on private subjectivity, and an “externalist” view that makes it depend on economic and social institutions. The chapter reviews four, recent strategies in the literature which take the “externalist” view and move toward a socially embedded individual conception. All four make ability to adjust part of what people are, but all four remain attached to the idea that individuals are only made up of preferences. Thus, I argue they fail to explain how people are autonomous individuals able to choose and act freely.

This chapter introduces the development of individual dignity in Japan. First, it notes that the idea of individual dignity in the Japanese Constitution is affected by the US Constitution through the enactment process. However, there are still some social constraints on individualism in the law. Next, I scrutinize two factors of individual dignity in light of the hybrid approach in academic discussion. The Japanese Constitution has been affected not only by the US Constitution but also the Prussian Constitution. As a result, it contains both the individualism of the US Constitution and the human personality of the German Basic Law. Finally, I shed light on individual dignity in Japan by reviewing constitutional case law. Although the Supreme Court indicated both factors of individual dignity, for most of the time after WWII the Court upheld the laws that constrained individualism. Recently, the Court tends to hold unconstitutional the old laws that constrain individual dignity by looking to social change. This reorientation of the Court regards society as supporting individualism. Society plays the role of a catalyst toward progress in individual dignity.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution entrenched the right to human dignity – a concept that the Philippine Supreme Court has invoked since the 1940s. This chapter argues that Filipino justices have been using“dignity”or “human dignity”to avoid a strict originalist or textualist interpretation of constitutional provisions. They cite dignity as justification to expand existing constitutional rights or to uphold governmental actions that facilitate full enjoyment of such rights. They employ the dignity language mainly to further individual self-fulfilment, autonomy, or self-realization, subject only to select community interests that are expressly recognized in the Constitution. Such understanding and use of dignity in judicial interpretation has been largely shaped by culturally traumatic historical events, Catholic teachings, and nonmunicipal laws. Despite almost eighty years of invoking dignity in judicial interpretation and adjudication, however, the right to human dignity has yet to be consistently and faithfully used for what it was meant to be – a standard principle of interpretation to which Filipino justices must adhere in human rights adjudication.

Human dignity is not contained in the text of the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was not until early 90s that “dignity” was enacted in constitutional amendments, not as “human dignity” but as “dignity of women.” “Human dignity” entered into Taiwan’s constitutional jurisprudence through the Constitutional Court’s 1996 interpretation by enlarging the “women’s dignity” clause to include “human dignity.” And a generation of German trained legal scholars who formed a strong academic community aided rapid and extensive reception of the Constitutional Court’s interpretive move. In the following two decades, the Court has consolidated dignity as a fundamental constitutional value and has used it to serve four functions. The first is to add weight to the existing basic rights. The second is to ground unenumerated rights, such as right to privacy, right to reputation, and right of personality. The third is to entail inviolable core of basic rights not subject to balancing. The fourth is to balance constitutional duty and right. I also note that, after 2003, human dignity has increasingly been associated with the values of self-realization and self-fulfilment.

Chapter 5 centers around the concept of legal majority that distinguished not only adults from minors but also Republican law that honored such differentiation from Qing law that upheld parental control over grown-up and minor children alike. Marriage, which had once been conceived as a relationship arranged by parents to continue ancestral worship, was reconceptualized as a union formed by and between mature men and women for the purpose of raising minor children to achieve autonomous adulthood. Parents’ lifelong custodial rights over property and labor of their children were replaced by a maintenance regime that entitled aged parents to request financial support, but that prioritized adult sons and daughters’ needs over parental demands.