The study of Asia and its plural legal systems is of increasing significance, both within and outside Asia. Lawyers, whether in Australia, America or Europe, or working within an Asian jurisdiction, require a sound knowledge of how the law operates across this fast-growing and diverse region. Law and Legal Institutions of Asia is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of eleven key jurisdictions in Asia - China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore and the Philippines. Written by academics and practitioners with particular expertise in their state or territory, each chapter uses a breakthrough approach, facilitating cross-jurisdictional comparisons and giving essential insights into how law functions in different ways across the region and in each of the individual jurisdictions.

Public Law in East Asia is a collection of the leading English-language articles on constitutional and administrative law in the Asian region, written by many of the leading scholars from this area. The region has its own distinct legal and political traditions, and its systems of government have facilitated dynamic economic growth, but the role of public law has not been well understood. Covering a wide range of jurisdictions in a single volume, this collection provides insights into the ways in which institutions of Western origin have been integrated into Asian political and legal cultures, producing new syntheses.

The shift of economic gravity towards East Asia requires a critical examination of law's role in the Asian Century. This volume explores the diverse scholarly perspectives on law's role in the economic rise of East Asia and moves from general debates, such as whether law enjoys primacy over culture, state intervention or free markets in East Asian capitalism, to specific case studies looking at the nature of law in East Asian negotiations, contracts, trade policy and corporate governance. The collection of articles exposes the clefts and cleavages in the scholarly literature explaining law's form, function and future in the Asian Century.

As the worlds political and economic landscape changes in response to the rise of Asian countries such as China, so Asian influences on the global legal order will become more pronounced. Many countries in the region, such as Japan and South Korea, influence the development of international law in various ways, either individually or collectively through multinational organisations such as ASEAN. This collection of published work by leading East Asian scholars covers Asian perspectives concerning various issues in international law, ranging from general perspectives to particular themes such as international economic law, international human rights law, international ocean law, international criminal law, international security law and international dispute settlement. For the first time it provides a comprehensive picture of how and why East Asian countries participate in international law making, as well as comply with international law in their state practices. In so doing, the editors attempt to address the question whether the rising powers in East Asia will change the existing international legal order in future.

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.

A challenging and provocative book that contests the liberal assumption that the rule of law will go hand in hand with a transition to market-based economies and even democracy in East Asia. Using case studies from Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam, the authors argue that the rule of law is in fact more likely to provide political elites with the means closely to control civil society. It is essential, therefore, to locate conceptions of judicial independence and the rule of law more generally within the ideological vocabulary of the state.

"This book suggests that, far from being irrelevant, law made an important contribution to the "East Asian miracle." The findings in the book show that, with the introduction of market-based economic policies, law and legal institutions tended to converge with economic development among the six economies and with the institutions of the West, although the extent of convergence differs from country to country and for different areas of the law."--BOOK JACKET.