This book began in 2003. I had been working with the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) in Hong Kong for over a year and had gone to Thailand to renew old acquaintances and make new ones. In Mae Sot, I met Min Lwin Oo. We sat and talked on the veranda of the Burma Lawyers’ Council office. Leafing through the records of criminal cases brought across the border from Myanmar, we selected one. A court had wrongly convicted a teenage boy for allegedly throwing rocks at policemen. Back in Hong Kong, I wrote up the case, and publicised it. Radio stations picked it up and contacted the boy’s family. His mother spoke out fearlessly. People in Myanmar and abroad expressed their support. Something happened that I had not expected. Within days, a government minister ordered the boy’s release. It got me thinking.

Over the coming years, Min Lwin and I collaborated on many more cases. Now and then we had successes. More often we did not. But I learned a great deal along the way. And I had the opportunity to work closely with Basil Fernando, director of the ALRC and its sister organisation, the Asian Human Rights Commission. Basil pushed my thought from individual narratives to larger questions of politics, power, and violence. He posed questions both intuitively and intellectually. His lived experiences affected how he communicated. Although my experiences are not his, I hope a little of Basil’s voice has carried onto the pages that follow.

I researched and wrote the book at the Australian National University (ANU). From first steps as a doctoral candidate until putting the finishing touches on the manuscript, I got all the support I needed. To my supervisors, Hilary Charlesworth, Robert Cribb, and one external supervisor, Myint Zan, I owe a lasting debt of gratitude. Above all, I am grateful to Ed Aspinall for chairing my panel. Ed did not know a great deal about Myanmar or the politics of courts, but he knew everything about how to guide a student to successful submission of a thesis. His advice was unfailingly reliable, his friendship and good humour, irreplaceable.

For much of my time studying at the ANU, Ed headed the Department of Political and Social Change, in the College of Asia and the Pacific. Three other heads of this department helped the book to fruition. Ben Kerkvliet left just as I arrived, yet stayed in touch and always responded generously when I contacted him. Paul Hutchcroft – initially in the department and then as head of the School of International, Political and Strategic Studies, where the department is located – gave strong backing throughout. And as a research fellow I have had the pleasure of working with Greg Fealy, whose unreserved support has made all the difference to the book’s timely completion.

Among fellow travellers in the department, Tyrell Haberkorn and Jacqui Baker have provoked me to think about my research critically, and have been generous with the contents of their bookshelves. Other colleagues who have set examples for me as a scholar include Marcus Mietzner, Sally Sargeson, Tamara Jacka, Luigi Tomba, Paul Kenny, and Andrew Walker. Eve Warburton and Sheryn Lee taught undergraduate classes with me while I was revising the manuscript, and did so brilliantly. Julie Fitzgibbon and Helen McMartin steered all of us through the paperwork and peculiarities of university administration.

With Trevor Wilson, Monique Skidmore, and Nicholas Farrelly, I have convened a number of the Myanmar/Burma Update conferences. These events have been tremendously nourishing intellectually, and Trevor’s tireless advocacy for research on Myanmar at the ANU has been greatly encouraging.

None of my work at the ANU would have been possible without a Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for doctoral study, supplemented along the way by funding to do fieldwork and attend local and international conferences obtained from my department, school, college, the Research School of Asia and the Pacific, and the Vice Chancellor’s office. For all this funding I am truly appreciative.

To my pleasant surprise, as my research progressed other people whose writing I admire started to take an interest. Craig Reynolds read various drafts and listened patiently to good ideas and bad. Frank Munger gave me confidence during early stages of research. As it neared completion, Martin Krygier gave me much more. Both Frank and Martin have welcomed me into their homes with friendship, food, and conversation full of good ideas and advice, as have Jim Scott and Dan Slater. Discussions with Eve Darian-Smith, Terry Halliday, Mary Callahan, and Dany Celermajer have been stimulating and too short.

Sophie Viravong, head librarian of the Mainland Southeast Asia collection at the National Library of Australia, helped me to obtain many materials used for this research. The library is an exemplary public institution thanks to the commitment and enthusiasm of Sophie and her colleagues. While on cataloguing stints there, I habitually snuck away to meet Andrew Selth. I am indebted to him for all his assistance, and eagerly await his next book. At the other end of the library’s line, thank you to the ever-resourceful Thant Thaw Kaung, and the ever-gracious Ma Win Win at the Myanmar Book Centre.

My Burmese-language instructor, Daw Mar Lay, would have preferred a student of sociolinguistics or stone inscriptions. To her credit, she took me in as a pupil and as one of the family, even after she knew that those topics were not mine. My other instructor and lunchtime companion U Kyaw Nyunt has over the years become a dear friend. Without him my knowledge of Burmese would be far more rudimentary than it is today, and the lunches would have been less appetising.

Among the many courageous and resilient people in Myanmar whom I have had the honour of getting to know are U Aung Thane and fellow lawyers at his inconspicuous yet indefatigable firm, Ko Min Min and colleagues at Olive Branch, Kyaw Min San and everyone at Justice For All, Than Myint Aung, Law Dan Zau and family, U Tin Aung Htun, and U Myint Aye and team at Human Rights Defenders and Promoters – more strength to them all. Thanks to Eugene Quah for breakfast discussions. Thank you also, with great respect, to Htet Wai Aung, Nandar, U Kyaw Min, and Wai Wai Nu. Above all, I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to meet me and speak about courts, police, and criminal cases in Myanmar.

As Myanmar has entered a period of political change, so too has scholarship on the country. A new and exciting intellectual community is emerging. Among its members, thanks in particular to Dom Nardi and Melissa Crouch for comments and questions about my work. I look forward to continued discussions, and to reading what these scholars publish in coming years.

Other people whose insights and friendship have helped me along the way include Moon Jeong Ho, Sanjeewa Weerawickrama, Danilo Reyes, Baseer Naveed, Bijo Francis, Md. Ashrafuzzaman, Philip and Irene Setunga, Angkhana Neelaphaijit, Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, Wong Kai Shing, Kim Soo A, Michael Anthony, Nilantha Ilangamuwa, Purdey Mak, Norman Voss, Meryam Dabhoiwala, Louise Sun, Amy Mak, Hazel Le, Linda Lai, Lao Mong Hay, Mark Tamthai, Jack Clancey, Sor Rattanamanee Polkla, Preeda Tongchumnum, Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, Supinya Klangnarong, Puttanee Kangkun, Kyaw Htet, Aye Aye Mar, Kirity Roy, Shiv Prasad Singh, Shiv Karan Singh, Mandira Sharma, and Chris Cusano. Thank you also to Sieglinde and Robert, Bianca and Carl.

At Cambridge University Press, Lucy Rhymer guided the manuscript smoothly from proposal to publication. I am appreciative of her, Amanda George, and their colleagues for their professionalism and expertise, as well as the two reviewers of the manuscript. In Australia, Matt Fenwick gave valuable writing advice. Belinda Henwood edited and Sherrey Quinn indexed the final text. Sarah Bishop and Chit Win double-checked the citations. Allison Ley proofread an earlier draft. In Yangon, ‘Boothee’ Thaik Htun went on assignment for the cover photograph.

My wife Saranyaphak monitored the drafting and revising of this book in all its iterations. More than anyone else, she will be happy to see it in print at last. As it is mine, so it is hers.

Back in the mid-1980s, my family moved to the Philippines. At the time, my parents might have wondered if they were doing the right thing for their two teenage boys. They were. In Manila, our family grew from four to five. There they awakened in their three children a lifelong love of inquiry, an enthusiasm for meaningful work, and a lasting interest in Southeast Asia: Jeremy for a time in Vietnam and Cambodia, Emily back in the Philippines. Thanks to Wendy and John, we lost any inhibitions we might have had to seek out and explore the unfamiliar. They opened the door; we walked through it. What more could we have wanted?

Copyright acknowledgements are as follows. Chapter 1 builds on ‘Law and Order as Asymmetrical Opposite to the Rule of Law’, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 6.1 (2014): 96–114; Chapters 2 and 3 contain parts taken from ‘Rule-of-law Lineages in Colonial and Early Postcolonial Burma’, Modern Asian Studies (2015): forthcoming; Chapter 2 also draws on a section of ‘Bodies on the Line in Burma’s Criminal Law Reports, 1892–1922’, Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar, eds. Melissa Crouch and Tim Lindsey (Oxford: Hart, 2014) 77–94; Chapter 6 is taken in part from ‘Myanmar’s Courts and the Sounds Money Makes’, Myanmar’s Transition: Openings, Obstacles and Opportunities, eds. Nick Cheesman, Monique Skidmore, and Trevor Wilson (Singapore: ISEAS, 2010) 231–48, reproduced here with the kind permission of the publisher, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg; Chapter 8 intersects with the contents of ‘Not Just Defending; Advocating for Law in Myanmar’, Wisconsin International Law Journal 31.3 (2014): 702–33 (with Kyaw Min San); and, ‘What Does the Rule of Law Have to Do with Democratisation (in Myanmar)?’ South East Asia Research 22.2 (2014): 213–32 (copyright © 2014 SOAS. Used by Permission of IP Publishing Ltd). Thank you to Ronald Janse, Claire Weatherhead, Ng Kok Kiong, Kim Hardtke, John Edmondson, and Sue Allerton for giving or arranging for permission to republish material from these pieces.