The article explains how authoritarian regimes like Singapore exhibit legal hybridity by using law both to strengthen control and to limit their own power, blending elements of rule of law and rule by law.
The essay argues that Thai cause lawyers’ conflicting views on recent coups reveal how the rule of law is shaped by national identity, personal experience, and ties to social movements, rather than a universal legal standard.
China’s legal profession has rapidly privatized, leading to greater lawyer organization and social advocacy within the one-party state, despite ongoing government control.
The essay situates China’s Human Rights Lawyers within authoritarian legality studies, revealing how rights lawyers navigate China’s courts to pursue social activism amid the state’s efforts to use law while maintaining political control.
Despite increasing authoritarian control over the judiciary, Turkish activist lawyers such as the Çağdaş Hukukçular Derneği strategically engage with the legal system as a form of grassroots resistance that challenges and redefines state-imposed legal boundaries.
In Myanmar’s authoritarian legal system, everyday lawyers resist state power by preserving client dignity, offering subtle defiance where rule of law is absent.
This book explores how Indonesia’s leading legal aid organization, YLBHI, has used cause lawyering to resist authoritarianism, navigate democratic setbacks, and defend legal freedoms amid growing threats to democracy.
YUCOM used international review to challenge Serbia’s ombudsperson for lacking independence and competence.
Despite some lawyers in Taiwan working for social justice, the idea of actively opposing a repressive state is not yet central to the legal profession, though ongoing democratization and legal reforms may enable a more politically engaged role for lawyers in the future.
In February 2011, Chinese authorities detained numerous online activists and rights lawyers to suppress potential Arab Spring. This inspired unrest, using harsh interrogation and intimidation tactics, which later sparked public debate and legal critique over China’s criminal procedure laws.