First of all, I apologize for not posting the past few weeks. I've been a bit sick and decided to take it easy.
When catching up on the news, I saw an interesting development in Malaysia. The government recently appointed two female judges to the Shariah court system - the first women ever on the Islamic bench. Sisters in Islam, a feminist NGO group, had long advocated such a move in order to reduce the alleged bias against women on the courts. However, as I discussed in my recent review of the book Islamic Modern, the reality of gender dynamics in the courts might be a bit more complex. Nonetheless, a greater gender balance on the bench is inevitably a positive development for the Shariah courts.
Critics agree that much of Southeast Asia desperately needs judicial reform and rule of law. Yet, there is remarkably little comparative scholarship on law and legal institutions in the region. In this blog, I'll follow constitutional developments in Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
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