The Kingdom of Bhutan has chartered a new school of law that will incorporate Bhutanese ideals of community law. This is part of the government’s overall mission to bring national prosperity through happiness.
The Bhutanese government has been concerned that lawyers are returning from training in Western nations with adversarial winner-takes-all approach to solving disputes. The government aims to marry Western law with the Bhutanese concept of community justice, preferring negotiated settlements to adversarial lawsuits.
In 1971, the country rejected using the GDP as the only measure of a nation’s prosperity. In its place, Bhutan created the Gross National Happiness (GNP) index based on measuring physical, environmental, social, and spiritual health of its people. All proposed government policies are required to improve the GNP.
The school opens this spring and expects to have its first class in 2017.
Image credit: Asian Development Bank / Flickr
