This article examines the history of the evolution of Islamic legal authority in Indonesia and provides an account of how it is contested and negotiated in contemporary Indonesia, using the history of family law reform as an example. There is a plurality of sources of authority for Islamic law as they operate within the domain of family law. The case studies reveal tensions between continuity and change in the development of Islamic legal principles and the strategies that different actors employ to advance their preferred version of Islamic legal norms: while the state has adopted a synthetic approach in order to accommodate these multiple legal authorities and increase the efficacy of its own statutes, the ulama persistently insist on the authority of fiqh as the immutable point of reference in resolving legal problems faced by Muslims. These conflicts ensure that the statutes will continue facing challenges as a legitimate interpretation of Islamic law in Indonesia.

This article considers the extent to which the legal framework for making land use decisions in Singapore allows for public participation. It examines the issue from two angles: the creation and preservation of the built environment, and the transient use of public space. The first angle is discussed primarily from a heritage law viewpoint, focusing on planning law, compulsory acquisition law, and the legal regime for creating national monuments. As for the second angle, the article looks at how the use of common spaces for assemblies and processions is regulated. The foregoing are examined in the context of Edward Soja’s assertion in Seeking Spatial Justice (2010) that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access in cities is an important right.

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.

This article began as mere curiosity over what appeared to be a paradox – Singapore and Hong Kong share countless economic and geopolitical similarities and compete vigorously for foreign direct investment (FDI), yet only the former has become a pharmaceutical hub while the latter struggles to attract any FDI in the sector. To find the reason for the “drastic” difference in pharmaceutical FDI, we compare the economic, legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks of the two jurisdictions focusing on the factors that have been identified in the economic literature as having the most relevance for FDI decision-making. The analysis discounts economic and legal factors before finding variances in policy and regulatory frameworks as the critical difference accounting for the disparity in the pharmaceutical FDI. Given that Hong Kong occasionally considers transforming itself into the “pharmaceutical centre for the Asia-Pacific”, this article calls for a change in policy approach and strategy before this aspiration is considered more realistically.

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.

This article seeks to utilize the existing literature on referendums to discuss the current situation in Hong Kong in order to make some theoretical and practical contributions to the field of constitutional studies. Theoretically, it attempts to situate and analyse Hong Kong’s current situation within Professor Tierney’s influential framework on constitutional referendums in order to further develop the constitutional theory in this area. Practically, it analyses, through comparative study, whether (and if so, how) referendums might provide a mechanism through which Hong Kong’s constitutional debate could productively move forward. It concludes by reiterating aspects of the Hong Kong experience that have aligned with, and further contributed to the constitutional theory on referendums and representative democracy. Moreover, it recommends that the Hong Kong Government begin consultations towards the tabling of legislation for a non-binding advisory referendum to be developed in accordance with the lessons learned from the jurisdictions discussed throughout the article.

It is likely that no criminal behaviour breeds as much condemnation and fear as sex offences. Tragic examples of young victims of sex offenders from around the world have raised societal concerns and prompted calls for increased surveillance and control. It is responsible public policy to address these concerns in ways that will increase public protection and allay unnecessary fears. The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, the paper examines Hong Kong’s recently implemented Sexual Conviction Record Check Scheme against the Territory’s low crime victimization rate. Second, it compares the Scheme with pre-employment screening checks in Australia and the UK. The paper finally concludes with proposals for changes to the Scheme.

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.

Recurrent proposals to establish a constitutional supervisory committee have been pertinaciously rejected in spite of widespread recognition of the Chinese Constitution’s ineffectiveness. And yet, the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee has long epitomized in practice a prototypic form of constitutional supervision. Vested with quasi-judicial competences, the Committee seemed destined for a central role under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. The tight secrecy imposed on its proceedings and the suppression of its potential to act consistently and with a distinct identity have fatally undermined the Committee’s ability to modulate constitutional tensions by way of coordinating expectations of the Basic Law’s proper meaning. The experience of the Basic Law Committee reveals the recalcitrance of the Party-state toward constitutional interpretation by any specialized body, even one whose powers are heavily circumscribed and whose membership is tightly controlled.

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.

The Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has significantly revised its overall market supervision framework over the last two decades. China’s insider trading laws, however, remain broad and abstract, while most enforcement measures take place inside a black box. These circumstances have led to an unpredictable and ineffective enforcement regime. This article examines all administrative sanctions cases from 2000 to 2013 in order to examine the CSRC’s actual enforcement practices. This data shows that the agency has a history of inconsistent enforcement, which stands as a warning against the consequences of unpredictable regulation. Moreover, it argues that the Commission’s current approach to recognizing illegal gains is both unreasonable and illegal, and that the CSRC has failed to adequately enforce actions for loss evasion cases. By adjusting enforcement policy to take these considerations into account, the CSRC would significantly improve the efficacy of the sanctions regime in China.

Although reputation in general plays an effective role in social control in human communal life, this does not seem to work well in present-day China. This article discusses why “reputation as social control” malfunctions in Chinese society in view of the widespread reputation bankruptcy in various professions. Starting with China’s discredited milk industry, it analyses similar regulatory failures in the economic, judicial, academic, and political sectors, explaining the interplay between key institutions. It argues that such regulatory failures can largely be attributed to the use, misuse, and abuse of reputation as a means of social control by the Chinese Party State to maintain monopoly power in a much diversified society resulting from China’s rapid economic development and globalization. Based on the analysis of the Chinese circumstances, this article is also meant to contribute to the study of reputation as social control in general.

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.