This paper uses Singapore as a case study in how the international anti-trafficking movement has influenced the regulation of sex work. In doing this, it explores the various historical, geographical, and socio-legal factors which have shaped Singapore’s system of regulation. It then presents the contemporary composition of the regulation of sex work in Singapore: a system of informal rules and protections hidden in the shadow of formal legal institutions. Finally, it analyses the impact of the international anti-trafficking movement, with specific emphasis on the American Trafficking in Persons Report, on Singapore’s regulation of sex work. It suggests that the recent increase of police raids on red light districts is aimed primarily at image control, and that these raids are undermining a functioning regulatory system. It concludes by suggesting that to improve upon its existing regulatory system, Singapore should focus on eliminating sex worker stigma and improving the rights of migrant workers.

Over the last six decades, the Supreme Court of India has created and re-created a right to property from very weak textual sources, despite constitutional declarations calling for social revolution, numerous amendments to reverse key judgments, and even, in 1978, the repeal of the core constitutional provisions guaranteeing a right to property. This article challenges the usual account of these developments. The primary contention is that the 1978 repeal is much less significant than it appears, due to the Court’s creative interpretation of other constitutional provisions. The Supreme Court has consistently advanced liberal models of constitutionalism and property, despite the influence of other models on the original constitutional design and later amendments. This article also examines whether the Court’s liberalism is compatible with the egalitarian values of the Constitution, and how its position will affect attempts to address social issues relating to the distribution of property in India.

The so-called crisis of human rights requires a precise diagnosis. Through a theoretical discussion of human rights and legal pluralism in the context of the freedom of religion in Malaysia, this paper suggests that the crisis ought to be understood as something vital to the character of rights. Crisis is not tangential to the human rights project: rights are political objects engendering political responses. Beginning with an excursion into legal positivism and liberalism, the paper argues that analyses of rights based on abstraction and presumptions of homogeneity are confounded in contexts of contested plurality. Secondly, legal pluralism is raised as a more suitable framework for rights. Finally, Augustine and Schmitt offer some clues as to how the political status of human rights might be properly acknowledged. The prominent Malaysian case of Lina Joy provides an ongoing commentary on the dangers of divorcing human rights from this essential political character.

What is the fate of legal transplants when they arrive from one culture to another? Using the theoretical framework of legal transplantation developed by Masaji Chiba and the theory of religion developed by S.N. Balagangadhara the problem is tested with two different types of indigenous law, in Japan and India, which do not have religion. When certain kinds of legal ideas, embedded as norms within the Western culture, which is constituted by a religion, Christianity, enter non-Western cultures that do not have religion, those ideas break down, become distorted, absurd or nonsensical, and induce conflict. The secular state engages in the process of suppressing what it implicitly regards as false religion or idolatrous practices. As Chiba foresaw, this process can even lead to the identity postulate of a legal culture being altered or destroyed.

The traditional narrative of judicial independence in India and Sri Lanka goes like this. The Indian Constitution established a strong and independent judiciary, which has become one of the most powerful in the world. By contrast, judicial independence was never entrenched in Sri Lanka due to insufficient constitutional safeguards and political interference. This paper seeks to challenge this narrative. It argues that despite important structural differences, India and Sri Lanka have followed similar judicial paths since the 1970s. Both judiciaries relaxed procedural requirements to allow sweeping public interest litigation; defined secularism and regulated religious practices in line with the dominant religious tradition; and largely deferred to the executive on the scope and necessity of emergency regulations. This remarkable convergence in jurisprudence demonstrates that (1) the Sri Lankan Supreme Court is more rights-protective and (2) its Indian counterpart is less willing to assert its independence on controversial issues than traditionally understood.

The transition of the People’s Republic of China into a market economy and the ensuing development of its real estate market have seen the rise of a new type of case, related to the sale of “second hand properties” (er shou fang) (二手房,): the “disputes in transactions for haunted houses” (xiong zhai maimai jiufen) (凶宅买卖纠纷). Can the plaintiff’s rights, which are not regulated by express provisions of statutory law but are rooted in traditional beliefs, be claimed in the courts of a socialist country? What are the legal grounds of these claims, if any? My aim is to highlight, through the analysis of several cases decided by the People’s Courts since 2004, the complex relationship between tradition, law, and economy in a country that provides one of the greatest examples of “legal transplants” in the history of mankind.

Not long after the establishment of its Constitutional Tribunal in February 2011, Myanmar faced a constitutional crisis, when on 6 September 2012, all nine judges of the Tribunal resigned, after the Burmese parliament (Hluttaw) had initiated impeachment proceedings against the Tribunal members. The incident was seen by several commentators as a sign of the growing strength and independence of the Hluttaw, while others argued that the impeachment of the Tribunal could threaten future stability. In February 2013, nine new members of the Constitutional Tribunal were appointed. However, several questions surrounding the role of the Constitutional Tribunal in Myanmar’s reform process remain. In particular, it is not entirely clear how the independence and authority of the Tribunal should be further strengthened. This paper examines the role of Myanmar’s Constitutional Tribunal, against the background of the country’s history and current political situation. By drawing on the experiences of the Indonesian Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi), the paper addresses the question of how the post-impeachment Tribunal may be able to fortify its position vis-à-vis the various political actors in the country.