Modernity has been the idée fixe of law and society scholarship from the very beginning. It is impossible to imagine our field without its roots in the rather different theories of Weber, Marx, and Durkheim about the defining characteristics of a modern legal system; and their theories still resonate in the work of 21st-century researchers. Moreover, pre-modern law and post-modern law, as their names suggest, are also defined and analysed by law and society scholars in relation to the central concept of modernity. Modernity and its pre- and post-incarnations are the very bedrock of the law and society field.

This article challenges the Weberian view that modernization stems from the rational legal system, wherein legal-rational authority displaces traditional and charismatic authority as the transformative agent. We contend instead that, in key instances at the forefront of Asian development, monarchy has orchestrated economic and built-environment modernisation. In Thailand and Malaysia, royal interventions have operated outside or behind formal laws governing planning and development, producing significant outcomes for cities and economies. Two case studies illustrate this claim. In Bangkok, the King has played a leading role in shaping urban development. In Johor, the Sultan—later Malaysia’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong—has similarly directed the Iskandar Malaysia development region. These interventions exceed the expectations of constitutional monarchy, relying not on legal-rational authority but on traditional notions of royal power. Thus, monarchy emerges as a decisive agent of modernisation, complicating conventional theories of rationalisation and authority in Southeast Asia.

Sri Lanka is immersed in the ideology of Buddhist primacy: “the island belongs to its Sinhala Buddhists, and Buddhism should dominate the state.” Why does this ideology attract? The standard answer is that it justifies the power of the Sinhala Buddhist ethnic group. This article offers a different take through two contestations of modernity. It draws from Sabhyatva Rajya Kara or Towards a Civilisation-State by the Sinhala public intellectual Gunadasa Amarasekara, and the work of post-secular thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, and argues that, along with power, Buddhist primacy attracts because it offers an invitation to join a dignifying, heroic narrative, and a vision of “fullness.” That is, there is more to Buddhist primacy than power. This points to the need for a richer human anthropology, and a fuller account of religion, in studies of religion and constitutions.

The crime of rape has been postulated as an unlawful violation of an individual’s rights or interests. However, this article argues that sexual violence against women in Thailand was traditionally viewed as a breach of an interpersonal hierarchy. It was not until the modern criminalization of rape that lawyers attempted to identify the victim’s individual rights as the essence of the crime. By examining the legal techniques employed by these lawyers in drafting, implementing, and adjudicating the crime, the article contends that the voices and demands of female subjects of rape have been silenced or misplaced. The article will offer studies of legal techniques used by lawyers from various institutions in articulating rape and constructing its subjects from the 19th century to the present. This jurisprudence provides context for the current debate on sexual violence in Thailand and makes it possible to critically reassess the right-based conceptualization of rape law.

This article argues that contemporary Indian law is animated by two intertwined imaginings of law: as a rational, rule-bound process and as a power that makes decisions as a normless act of prerogative. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi’s terrorism courts, the paper examines petitions written by individuals accused under anti-terror laws, revealing how these texts invoke the dual legal imaginaries. Petitions—ranging from formal legal documents to handwritten pleas—are analysed through the idea of epistolarity, to pay attention to both the form and content of these petitions. The article argues that these letters are affective and rhetorical performances that simultaneously invoke imaginings of the law as both rule and prerogative. In doing so, the subjectivity of the petitioners oscillates between rights-bearing citizens and humble supplicants praying for the law’s intervention.

This article contributes to the “praxiological turn” in legal pluralism studies by offering an ethnomethodological re-reading of Masaji Chiba’s theory. Responding to critiques of its “rigidity,” it reframes Chiba’s theoretical “three dichotomies” not as static classificatory categories, but as a set of heuristic questions for discovering the practical methods members use to accomplish a pluralistic legal order. This approach reveals how legal pluralism is achieved in situ. It demonstrates that normative tensions—such as official/unofficial—are not pre-existing structures but are dynamically produced by participants in their moment-to-moment interaction. An analysis of Japanese lay judge deliberations illustrates how these dichotomies function as practical resources that members use to organize and negotiate “contested modernities.” This perspective unlocks the potential of Chiba’s legacy for empirically elucidating the interactional foundations of law as a lived phenomenon.

This article examines systemic rivalry between Indonesian criminal justice agencies, highlighting the inherent conflicts that arise when institutional actors with distinct values and priorities interact. It argues that analysing these conflicts reveals underlying power dynamics that hinder the system’s effectiveness. Indonesia serves as a compelling case study for analysing inter-agency conflict, where the source of conflict transcends procedural differences and stems from a power struggle driven by institutional self-preservation. Utilizing interviews, court decisions, media reports, and legislative analysis, this article delves into the power struggle between the police, prosecutors, and the anti-corruption agency (KPK). The analysis reveals the police to be at the centre of this conflict, resisting reforms that threaten their institutional survival. This article then argues that substantial reform of Indonesia’s criminal justice system would be difficult to achieve, as such rivalry is driven by patronage politics both within and outside the institution.

Within Chinese legal studies, the construction of a distinctly Chinese knowledge system emphasising “Chinese subjective consciousness” (中国主体意识) has become a new important agenda. This introductory article responds to this methodological turn and growing interest in a broader intellectual history of Chinese law. Until recently, traditional Western scholarship on Chinese legal history has largely focused on written legal documents, not on their underlying processes of knowledge production. While Chinese scholars acknowledge the significance of (cultural) translation of foreign legal knowledge, the entanglements of Chinese and Western legal genealogies within a knowledge-historical framework remains underexplored. This article introduces a knowledge-historical approach to study Chinese legal history by narrating the history of administrative law through the lens of local knowledge production through cultural translation. It reveals compelling stories of local actors, who engaged with new knowledge of administrative law in multiple processes and layers of knowledge production from the late Qing dynasty to the late 1980s.

“Embedded courts” explains how Chinese courts operate within the system of local bureaucratic organisation, raising concerns about how judges balance adjudicative functions with the expectations of local governance. Using 47,641 first-instance trademark judgments (2014–2021), we empirically examine adjudication in embedded courts and observe the following phenomenon: non-local plaintiffs are more likely to win but receive lower compensation; corporate defendants win more often yet face higher damages when they lose. Regional heterogeneity indicates that some courts exhibit lower support rates for local plaintiffs and well-known trademark holders. These findings reveal the strategic logic underlying local bureaucratic organisation. We develop a Judicial Behavior Index (JBI) and analyse Henan Province. The results suggest courts act as institutional actors responding to local governance incentives. By exercising discretion strategically, courts navigate local governance logics within the legal framework.