1 Cultivating Judicial Conversations on Human Rights Protection under the Auspices of a Regional Rights Regime Maartje De Visser * Key words: Asian court of human rights, national apex courts, dialogic inter-court relations, preliminary question mechanism, judicial qualifications, discursive reasoning style, Association of Asian Constitutional Courts and Equivalent Institutions. ABSTACT This article takes as its starting point recent efforts by the Korean Constitutional Court to mobilise support for the establishment of a regional rights system in Asia that is envisaged to include an Asian human rights court, akin to the design of similar systems in other parts of the world. It explains why dialogic relations between such a court and national apex courts in the would-be Contracting States are instrumental for the success of a regional rights mechanism. The article further identifies strategies that should be pursued to fashion a framework that would allow such dialogic relations to flourish. With several of these requiring institutionalization, it is important that as and when Asian States become more congenial to the idea of an external rights monitoring system, the issue of inter-court relations is duly considered at the drafting stage. * Associate Professor, School of Law, Singapore Management University. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies. Correspondence to: mdevisser@smu.edu.sg.