Law and Society in East Asia

The massive and complex process of change in East Asia over recent decades has brought about a transformation in the nature of law and legal institutions in the region. Whilst the process of change has to some degree mimicked western models of law and legal change, there have been significant differences in approach due to the different social foundations of East Asian societies. The more obvious of these has been the variety of ways in which rule of law ideas have been adopted in many East Asian countries where the role of the state is more dominant when compared with Western models. This volume brings together a selection of the most important writings on East Asia of researchers in recent years, and shows the broad range of questions which researchers have been addressing about the effect of law reform and legal change in societies dominated by traditional values and political forces, and at a time of massive economic change.

Christoph Antons is Chair in Law at the School of Law, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Australia; Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation; Affiliated Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Germany. Roman Tomasic is Professor in the Law School at Durham University, UK.

Contents: Introduction: law reform and legal change in East Asia; Part I Legal Change, Law Reform and the Rule of Law: Colonial law and the genesis of the Indonesian state, Daniel S. Lev; The transformation of Chinese law - from formal to substantial, Jianfu Chen; The rule of law and corporate insolvency in six Asian legal systems, Roman Tomasic and Bahrin Kamarul; The 'new' law and development movement in the post-Cold War era: a Vietnam case study, Carol V. Rose; What have we learned about law and development? Describing, predicting and assessing legal reforms in China, Randall Peerenboom. Part II Courts and Dispute Resolution: The myth of the reluctant litigant, John Owen Haley; The effects of liberalization on litigation: notes toward a theory in the context of Japan, Tom Ginsburg and Glenn Hoetker; China's courts: restricted reform, Benjamin L. Liebman. Part III Lawyers and Lawyering: The plight of China's criminal defence lawyers, Jerome A. Cohen; Client influence and the contingency of professionalism: the work of elite corporate lawyers in China, Sida Liu; The practice of law as an obstacle to justice: Chinese lawyers at work, Ethan Michelson. Part IV Law, Society and Legal Culture: Global markets and the evolution of law in China and Japan, Takao Tanase; Law and society studies in Korea: beyond the Hahm thesis, Kun Yang; Asian economic crisis, storytelling and legal institutions - a tale of two cities, Roman Tomasic. Part V Legal Pluralism, Religion and Gender: Towards gender equity in a developing Asia: reforming personal laws within a pluralist framework, Dinusha Panditaratne; The pursuit of the Perak regalia: Islam, law, and the politics of authority in the colonial state, Iza Hussin; The enigma of national law in Indonesia: the Supreme Court's decisions on gender-neutral inheritance, Ratno Lukito. Part VI Law, Tradition and 'Asian Values': 'We' v 'I': communitarian legalism in Singapore, Eugene K.B. Tan; Kings in the age of nations: the paradox of lèse