This article explores one aspect of India’s attempts to address its access to justice dilemma through the establishment of district-level consumer fora. Data points are extracted from 1,400 cases nationwide to piece together a portrait of the input and output of these institutions. The data collected include: win/loss rates; time from filing to decision; presence of attorneys (and their effects on win/loss rates and time from filing to decision); amounts of damages and costs awarded; and types of cases filed. In the end, this sampling of cases, combined with observations and interviews, led to several broad conclusions—that access to justice is increased but not for the marginalized or poor; that the consumer fora are severely underused; and that they are highly localized institutions leaving significant discretion in the hands of forum Presidents to drive the process which greatly varies the effects on access to justice among districts.

This paper argues that the Dalit situation of caste-based oppression in India could be characterized by the enduring co-existence of upward social mobility and atrocities. While being a common-sense understanding, the paper suggests that the relation between upward social mobility and enduring atrocity could be referred to as a “structural mechanism” in the Dalit situation. The concept is used to explain the Dalit problem. Moreover, this structural mechanism sheds more light on developments and discursive breaks in the legal context. A central lesson in the post-colonial period is that the problem of “untouchables” could not simply be conceptualized as a problem of civil law and untouchability. Rather, the problem of atrocities created demands and a need to make caste-based atrocities a concern for criminal law. Ambedkar’s significance as a symbol of Dalit assertion could be viewed in connection with the structural mechanism of Dalit achievements and caste-based exclusion.

The diversity and pluralism of Southeast Asia make it an ideal subject for law and society researchers, but by and large they have not given the region the attention it deserves. In this article, we argue for a more intense and systematic linking of research about Southeast Asia and the field of law and society. We focus on the theme of state and personhood to suggest how some of the central concerns of law and society may be relevant to Southeast Asian peoples and cultures. We illustrate our argument by selecting nine excellent articles by Southeast Asian scholars who do not currently identify their work with the law and society field, and we demonstrate that their research is rich with implications for the field. We welcome in particular the ways in which they have portrayed personhood as an ongoing construction and have highlighted its contingent relationship with the state. Building on these themes, we conclude the article with a plea for a more far-reaching engagement between Southeast Asian studies and law and society research.

Global climate change and consequent potential migration pose a number of challenges and are becoming increasingly important policy issues for Bangladesh. Therefore, policy responses need to deal with diverse issues, including sustainable development (SD), adaptation to climate change, and humanitarian assistance, to address the future challenges posed by climate change and consequent human displacement. There is no simple and straightforward solution to the challenges posed by climate-induced migration, and a “one-size-fits-all” approach will not effectively resolve the complex nature, and patterns, of population displacement. Rather than any single approach, a multifarious, comprehensive, proactive, and coherent policy approach is imperative for managing climate-induced migration in an orderly and humane manner. Based on the available data regarding the environment, climate change, and migration, this paper suggests a range of policy tools and approaches. It also sets out a road map showing how policy interventions could contribute to better integrating the full spectrum of migration issues and concerns into an overall environmental and developmental policy, and vice versa, within Bangladesh.

In this article, I explain the establishment of Crown Colony government within the racially diverse colonies of the British Empire through an examination of the reconstitution of the Straits Settlements as a Crown Colony in 1867. My central argument is that the reconstitution of the Straits Settlements as a Crown Colony rested on colonial officials and subjects’ shared understandings of the fragmented and unstable character of racially diverse societies. Such understandings were analogous to J.S. Furnivall’s concept of “plural society” and were generated by the negative images of “native” populations and the precarity of colonial rule. Despite the reception of the common law and its institutions in the colony, these beliefs ultimately justified colonial officials’ repudiation of liberal principles of government and law despite intransigent protests by a minority of officials and subjects. In the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements, this meant the institutionalization of a constitutional framework and laws that granted the Governor authoritarian powers over the legislature, judiciary, and society to maintain the social order.

Arguing for renewed attention to legal status as a problem of material forms and the practices around them, this paper builds, from an examination of documents in use, a theory of how competing notions of personhood shape legal status for Burmese people in Mae Sot, Thailand. It finds that there exist in Mae Sot two modes of documentary practice through which the legal status of Burmese people is apprehended. “Modes of documentary practice” refer not only to records, papers, certificates, cards, and forms, but to the patterns of filling in, wielding, explaining, and referencing a variety of print matter. The two modes identified in this paper exist in a feedback loop, with the result that Burmese people in Mae Sot are increasingly individuated as being part of a group for whom legal status is irrelevant and legal indistinctiveness is the norm.

This article begins with an account of the contexts surrounding China’s “Good Samaritan’s Dilemma”—the fear of civil liabilities as a result of a rescue attempt. It highlights how a notorious hit-and-run case in 2011 has prompted several provinces to consider Good Samaritan law—legislation aimed at encouraging altruism. In light of diverse opinions over the pros and cons of Good Samaritan law, it considers whether law should have a role to play in shaping moral behaviours. On the basis that the law has been on the books for as long as over a century in much of the Western world and parts of East Asia, this article explores how overseas experience may provide insights to China in its adaptation of Good Samaritan law. It concludes that, in China’s case, a non-punitive regime that seeks to protect and compensate Good Samaritans may help encourage the proverbial Chinese bystanders to be altruistic neighbours.

By severely constraining the political personhood of temporary migrant workers, states’ use of deportation laws seeks to curb agitation among these workers. Despite this, various episodes of unrest have been witnessed in both liberal and illiberal regimes across Asia. Drawing on a case study of Bangladeshi migrant construction workers in Singapore, this paper examines the development of migrant labour politics as deportation laws, and their enforcement, construct these workers as “use-and-discard” economic subjects. Data for the paper are drawn from multi-level sources—government, industry, media, and non-governmental organization (NGO) reports; interviews with key actors; and a participant observation stint in a construction firm—collected between 2010 and 2014. The paper argues that, rather than solely constraining, deportability serves as a constituent of certain forms of tactical worker contestations in the workplace. Specifically, under different workplace conditions, deportability can translate into differing forms of worker tactics, ranging from accommodation to confrontation and desertion. The outcomes of these strategies, in turn, have significant repercussions for the ways in which civil society groups and state-actors, respectively, challenge and reconfigure the political personhood of temporary migrant workers.

This article identifies and conceptualizes the structural features of the Party-state and proposes a “dual normative system” as a framework to interpret the constitutional reality of China. This framework has four components: (1) structural integration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or the Party) and the state; (2) reserved delegation of authority to the state; (3) bifurcation of state decision-making processes; and (4) cohabitation of the two normative systems: one of the Party and one of the state. This article demonstrates that the political reforms in China since the 1980s have not separated the power of the Party and the state, but have created an increasingly institutionalized dual normative system that is more complex compared with the previous fused system, yet more pliable to adjustments and more open to different interpretations, including to that of the “Party-state constitutionalism”, which interprets the “rule of law” as compatible with the rule of the Party.

Due to the pressures of urbanization, the urban poor often find themselves trapped in illegal settlements and informal employment. As housing is not affordable and formal employment is inaccessible to them because of their lack of education and skills, they live a precarious existence with insecure land tenure and employment. Discriminated against by the state on the grounds of their illegal status, the urban poor are unable to establish their identity and personhood rights as urban citizens, and so cannot access basic rights such as health care and social security. This article is based on fieldwork in Surakarta in Indonesia which studied the impact of a land-titling programme in an area previously characterized by informal tenure. It finds that the legitimation provided by land titles had a significant impact upon the lives of the residents, enabling them to access other personhood rights.

This article addresses the right to strike in the context of the new Labour Code and amended Trade Union Law of Vietnam.1 It analyses major problems posed today by wildcat strikes in Vietnam’s private sector. It argues that the ongoing approaches of the Vietnamese government and its social partners in strike resolution are ineffective and inconsistent with International Labour Standards. Finally, it suggests a model for the prevention and settlement of such strikes.

This article examines the legal framework regulating unskilled and low-skilled migrant workers in Singapore. It argues that the current legal framework discriminates against these migrant workers and conceptualizes them as undesirable for inclusion in the wider society. This, it is contended, is premised on the assumption that migrant workers could be sequestered from the local population to some extent. This article provides some challenges to this assumption, highlighting instead some of the broader social and political consequences of this exclusionary legal framework. Consequently, it is argued that a more inclusive and integrationist approach is needed, and some positive developments are highlighted.

Conflict among Thailand’s legal advocates for popular causes over the legitimacy of Thailand’s two twenty-first-century coups raises questions about the meaning of the rule of law. The general perception of inexorable globalization of an international interpretation of the rule of law and of cause lawyers as one of its important vectors runs counter to the experience of developing societies where rule of law is being adapted to the meaning of nation and individual identities informing everyday lives and the relationship between a society and its government. This essay uses career narratives of Thai cause lawyers to illustrate this point by examining sources of the rule of law’s meaning, including experiences shared by each generation of cause lawyers and communities of practice shaping individual careers and identities. Their career narratives suggest the importance of continuing relationships with social movement leaders on beliefs about Thailand’s readiness for democracy and meaning of a rule of law.

This article discusses politico-legal relations and actual decision-making in urban government in late colonial Indonesia, notably in the municipality of Bandung. On the basis of verbatim reports of council meetings in the early 1920s,1 the article catches the atmosphere of hot debates touching upon the core problem of colonial rule, namely inequality between racial groups. Decentralization and democratization in the colony had made such discussions unavoidable. The 1923 budgetary debate shows how eloquently elected representatives of the native population used the municipal council as a forum to plea for the interests of Indonesians. The colonial government referred to autonomy of urban desas to justify laissez-faire approaches to natives’ interests. The municipality was in doubt for, at the same time, colonial administration was transitioning from a minimalist to a welfare state model. Hence, notwithstanding their differences, the common ambition to develop Bandung, albeit in a colonial context and led by the mayor, contributed to co-operative attitudes.

This paper looks at the relationship between personhood and the state by taking a relational perspective both on the concept of personhood and on that of the state, and with a focus on social security. It presents a broad concept of social security. Based on research in the Moluccas of East Indonesia, and among Moluccan migrants in the Netherlands, it is explained how social security shapes personhood in situations in which the state is only a minor contributor, and people depend on mechanisms other than support and care from the state. Finally, it will be explored how long-distance relations of social security are maintained and how the position that respective actors have within these relationships affects notions not only of appropriate care, but also of personhood.

This article reflects upon the continuing historical denialism concerning the Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. We argue that the refusal of the Japanese government and others to squarely confront this wrong is made possible through the exploitation of a différend in Jean-François Lyotard’s sense of the term. The différend arises from a complex set of social, cultural, and legal sources, including patriarchal, colonial, and nationalistic constructions of the wrong and its victims. We seek to tentatively expose the nature of the différend by identifying these factors. We then sketch the beginnings of a possible response, drawing on Luce Irigaray’s strategy of emphasizing sexual difference and separation to pave the way for reciprocality between the sexes. The testimonies of the “comfort women” must be allowed to speak for themselves before a response can emerge based in other discourses.

Development co-operation in the legal and human rights sector is challenging. It is political, nuanced, and involves multiple, often competing, stakeholders. Adding to this, significant time is spent determining suitable fields for co-operation, designing comprehensive programmes, and establishing robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Donors often strive for “ownership” of programmes with tangible results that justify ongoing co-operation. Amid this added complexity, it is easy to forget that good programmes are often simple, well-founded ones that set realistic goals and timeframes. Sense and simplicity can be overlooked. This article draws on lessons learned from personal experiences in two legal and human rights co-operation programmes in Indonesia to discuss six points at the heart of this concept of sense and simplicity. The points are not exhaustive, and are not always easy to implement in the face of political realities. They are a starting point, and stress the need to get back to basics when planning, implementing, and monitoring such programmes.

The East India Company troops fighting the Burmese aggression on the frontier of Bengal in Eastern India “freed” upper and lower Assam territories in 1825. David Scott of the Bengal Service was appointed to oversee the establishment of civil and revenue administration in these frontier territories. He established a hierarchical multiple structure of “native courts”—called panchayats—as the chief medium of civil and criminal justice. This was ostensibly continuing a traditional Assamese form of dispute resolution—the mel; however, the British criminal jury as well as the expert assessor model animated the system. After his death in 1831, the system was brought in line with the rest of the Bengal administration based on the British court system. His experiment, paralleled in many other newly conquered and ceded districts from the Madras territories to Central India, suggests the use of this mode in post-conquest situations by British administrators in South Asia.