This paper is an empirical study on the nominations and appointments of Supreme Court Justices during a twenty-year period from 1988, when the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) was created in the 1987 Philippine Constitution, to 2008. The study examines the profile of individuals nominated by the JBC including their gender, age, geographical origin, academic background, and professional experience. It also explores whether the appointing Presidents display any preferences based on personal characteristics relating the effects of these preferences to the diversity on the Supreme Court. The study indicates that nominees and appointees all hail from the same background. As a result, membership of the Supreme Court is sorely unrepresentative of Philippine society. This study sets the stage for future research that will determine how this lack of diversity on the Supreme Court can affect the resolution of legal issues.

The narrative that defines privatisation, corporatisation, and the separation of ownership and regulatory functions as the key prerequisites for a successful state-owned enterprises’ (SOE) governance structure represents the literature's leading approach. This approach has been embedded in national laws and policies across many countries. Nonetheless, some legal scholars have scrutinised and questioned this single-minded perspective, emphasising the impact of existing institutional conditions and calling for an alternative understanding of corporate governance dynamics in different SOEs. Notwithstanding a vigorous debate on SOEs, it almost exclusively focuses on China, while Russia, being another large state-driven economy, has been missing. This article fills this gap and offers a comparative and critical perspective on the state ownership system in Russia. The analysis of Russian SOEs reveals classic governance and incentive problems attributable to state ownership. However, the question is how despite close affiliation to the State and high transaction costs caused by state interference, Russian SOEs have gained a substantial international market presence. This article answers this paradox.

This article investigates the extent of state intervention in the administration of Islam in Indonesia. The 1945 Constitution of Indonesia does not explicitly recognize or privilege any particular religion. Yet, the boundaries of religion-state relations in the country are often unclear and complex, especially in light of policies and laws that regulate religious life and appear to privilege the dominant religion and its adherents. In this article, I demonstrate the ways in which the state has increasingly interfered in the administration of Islam in Indonesia by focusing on two case studies: the management of Hajj and zakat. However, it is observed that the vague constitutional arrangements on religion in Indonesia provide avenues for interpretations (especially by the Ministry of Religious Affairs) that the state has a constitutional obligation to interfere in the administration of religion and implement religious doctrines; and in the case of Islam, to ‘bureaucratize’ the shariah. This further complicates the exercise of distinguishing between religious doctrines that require state intervention for implementation and those that do not.

In August 2017, responding to a petition from the losing candidate in the presidential election held days before, the Supreme Court of Kenya declared the results of the election null and void. Dramatic in itself, the decision stands in surprising contrast to the same Court's decision to uphold the 2013 election results following a similar petition. Beyond the different outcomes in 2013 and 2017, the Court's jurisprudential approach to the two petitions was markedly different. The Court showed significant deference to the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in 2013, and did not seriously interrogate its conclusion that the election had been free and fair. In 2017, however, the Court scrutinised the IEBC's process and paid close attention to the reasons it gave for declaring the result free and fair. This article considers the difference in the Court's approach in two ways. First, from a prescriptive perspective, it suggests when it is appropriate for courts to closely scrutinise the work of elections management boards and other ‘fourth branch’ institutions protecting democracy (IPDs). The article argues that where an IPD performs a function that is constitutive of rights, courts should be prepared to intervene. By contrast, where an IPD performs a function that is regulative of already constituted rights, courts of review should act with deference. On this basis, the article concludes that the Court should have engaged in a deeper review of the IEBC's 2013 decision. Second, from a descriptive perspective, the article suggests that the difference between the Court's 2013 and 2017 approaches can be explained by waning levels of public trust in the IEBC alongside growing levels of public confidence in the judiciary.

This article examines how labour law contributes to labour resistance in Vietnam through an empirical case study of the ‘core workers’ in Đồng Nai Province. These core workers are factory workers who have undergone legal training and who provide legal aid to factory workers in need. They have, at the same time, deployed their legal knowledge to demand access to justice for themselves and the factory workers. This article demonstrates that the core workers’ legal consciousness is shaped by their mobilization of the law and their own workplace experiences. It then investigates in detail a core worker’s engagements with individual and collective disputes, and discusses his views on legal aid, labour law, and workplace relationships. This article argues that the core workers’ resistance is not only a fight against illegal practices, but that it also embodies a call for the management’s moral obligations towards its workers.

In both India and Pakistan, parliament is constitutionally endowed with ‘constituent power’, that is, the power to introduce constitutional amendments via procedures laid down in the constitution itself. Duly promulgated amendments, however, are occasionally struck down when Supreme Court judges see them as violating what the judges themselves define as the ‘essential features’ of each country’s constitutional ‘basic structure’. I trace the migration of basic structure jurisprudence from India to Pakistan, focusing on the ways in which it has elevated the power of judges over that of elected officials in the realm of religion-state relations. Specifically, I highlight the ways in which judicial independence vis-à-vis judicial appointments has been described as an essential feature of each country’s constitution, greatly enhancing the autonomous power of judges to mould constitutional benches that, in turn, define India’s constitutional understanding of secularism and Pakistan’s relationship with Islam.

The Rule of Law is considered a major aspect of modern governance. For every legal system, it is important whether the Rule of Law is attained and how far it has been attained. Though there are various indicators and indexes of the Rule of Law they all have their limitations. This paper reported a study conducted in Hong Kong in 2005, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, to assess the level of attainment of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. It is found that the level of attainment is high but a downward trend is also discovered. A main objective of developing this new methodology in assessing Rule of Law, is that it could be used for tracking the development of the Rule of Law in a particular legal system and facilitating comparison between legal systems.

Notions of the social good including rights, fairness, and economic efficiency influence our choices of law and policymaking. The discussion on social good is normally a heated one in pluralistic societies with multiple worldviews on the right thing to do. This article brings a novel Islamic perspective on the social good in pluralistic societies. In doing so, it makes and defends three propositions: first, religious notions of the social good, including those derived from the Islamic worldview, should not be excluded from public justifications when making moral and policy choices. There is no good reason for plural/secular societies to reject the benefits of religious presence in public discourse given the overwhelming evidence on religious precepts being a mobilizing force to promote co-existence and social cooperation. Second, Islamic notions of social good can contribute to that end. The article criticizes the common perception of Islamic ethics that views Islamic doctrine as a rigid positivist system which imposes inflexible moral codes limiting the influence of independent human intellect and agency. I show that Islamic notions of the social good are dynamic and adaptable to change. The third part of the article shows that the social good in Islamic doctrine has always been defined with reference to essential human needs, including the promotion of life, intellect, social cooperation, and justice. At their core, Islamic notions of the social good exhibit an overarching deontological orientation towards moral choices. They broadly overlap with comparative and influential frameworks on human flourishing, including the ‘Human Development Paradigm’ and the ‘Capabilities Approach’.

This article analyzes the socio-economic and political contexts behind the 2013 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2013 Constitution), in which demands for deeper institutional reform emerged in Vietnam, and explains the constitutional discourse within Vietnam as to its economic order. Diverse forces and platforms within Vietnam’s party-state and beyond have contributed to the exchange of ideas and values on the economic order. As a result of this public discourse, the provisions on the economic order of the 2013 Constitution are ideological compromises, reflecting the contradicting views within the party-state and society in Vietnam on the role of the market, private property, and the freedom to conduct business. The 2013 Constitution has taken a step towards a free market economy by recognizing the decisive role of the market in the national economy. It emphasizes the importance of the private sector and promises that it will be treated fairly among all other economic sectors. From this perspective, the 2013 Constitution contains the seeds of future political and legal guarantees which could protect individual liberties. However, in line with the socialist ideology adopted by its predecessors, the 2013 Constitution reaffirms the dominance of the public sector and the leading role of state-owned enterprises, and preserves the ambiguous “ownership of the entire Vietnamese people of land and natural resources”. Due to this ambiguity, the 2013 Constitution fails to lay down the foundations for far-reaching comprehensive institutional reforms that Vietnam urgently requires.

The supremacy of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has been the basic norm in Vietnam’s constitution since 1980. While it was not changed in the final constitutional amendments in 2013, this grundnorm was seriously debated during the constitutional reform process between 2010-2013, thus indicating a shift in the constitutional dialogue in Vietnam. This article traces the history of this basic norm throughout constitutional amendments of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and assesses how the basic norm has become increasingly contested. Contestations over this basic norm have played out markedly over the recent constitutional reform process. The discursive power in these contestations has shaken the rationality-based legitimacy of this basic norm to its root. The continuing dominance of this norm depends to a large extent on how the Vietnamese party-state’s practical policy-making and policy implementation initiatives address the increasing tension between the supremacy of the CPV and other principles in the constitution.

The implementation of shari'ah (Islamic law) in the province of Aceh in Indonesia was the consequence of a national policy of legal pluralism, effected in 2001 when the national government decided to give a special status and wide autonomy to this region. However, certain problems have arisen. One of these is whether the Islamic courts of justice have been conferred competence to deal with Islamic criminal law and if so, which judicial institution should deal with the matter. Another is the meaning and scope of mu'amalat law (the law dealing with human relationships). It also appears that the central government has permitted shari'ah to be implemented for political reasons.

This article analyses China's global health governance (GHG) practices and GHG legal infrastructure in the wake of COVID-19. It posits that China has pursued a mix of bilateral and multilateral strategies during the pandemic to promote global cooperation and domestic regulation to shape an effective GHG response. It demarcates China's proactive role in norm-setting to respond to the global health crisis. It first considers China's responses to COVID-19 and its interaction model with multilateral institutions including WHO and GAVI. It then examines China's bilateral health strategies, taking its interactions with African countries as an example, before analysing and comparing existing norms and practices on the ‘right to regulate’ under the rules of the World Trade Organisation and treaties that China participates in that call for more regulatory recognition. The article then proceeds to examine China's new initiatives in shaping GHG strategy during COVID-19. Finally, it concludes and calls for a coordinated multilateral approach to handle global health crises.

Shareholder activism has changed corporate governance around the world in the past decade. Conventional wisdom holds that shareholder activism is only effective in firms with dispersed ownership; there has been much less discussion on whether and how activism would work in firms with controlling shareholders. This article fills this gap by investigating whether and how legal mechanisms influence strategy planning and activism outcomes based on hand-collected data regarding activists’ initiatives against firms with concentrated ownership in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2017. This article finds that cases using formal legal mechanisms appear to have had a higher success rate. Among the legal tools available, minority veto rights are the most popular mechanism used by activists in Hong Kong, and are quite effective in leveraging their position in controlled firms. Furthermore, the availability of legal remedies and the ownership level of controlling shareholders are factors that influence activists’ strategies. Most activist initiatives against controlled firms involve corporate governance disputes where activists can rely on legal protection to enhance their bargaining position. On the other hand, activists tend not to make their demands public, and they also avoid exercising legal rights when controlling shareholders control the majority of the shares.

Although reputation in general plays an effective role in social control in human communal life, this does not seem to work well in present-day China. This article discusses why “reputation as social control” malfunctions in Chinese society in view of the widespread reputation bankruptcy in various professions. Starting with China’s discredited milk industry, it analyses similar regulatory failures in the economic, judicial, academic, and political sectors, explaining the interplay between key institutions. It argues that such regulatory failures can largely be attributed to the use, misuse, and abuse of reputation as a means of social control by the Chinese Party State to maintain monopoly power in a much diversified society resulting from China’s rapid economic development and globalization. Based on the analysis of the Chinese circumstances, this article is also meant to contribute to the study of reputation as social control in general.

This article explores horizontal non-discrimination rights under the Constitution of India (Indian Constitution). The Indian Constitution is unique in that it expressly prohibits private discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, caste, religion, etc. for the purpose of, inter alia, “access to … shops” (Article 15(2)). The article argues that a historically grounded understanding of the word “shops”, in the context of the transformative purposes of the Indian Constitution, necessitates a broad reading that covers all private economic transactions where goods and services are offered to the public at large. Furthermore, seemingly contrary Supreme Court precedent, if it is constitutionally justifiable, must be restricted to its own facts. In sum, Article 15(2) of the Indian Constitution provides a radical constitutional remedy that is directly horizontally applicable to private conduct, and goes far beyond remedies developed in other jurisdictions, which have often needed to turn to legislation in order to adequately combat private discrimination in the economic and social sphere.

The question of whether constitutional law can protect, consolidate, and advance democracy has been considered extensively in multiple jurisdictions. The issue has not yet been considered in the context of one of the most problematic contemporary democratic transitions: Hong Kong’s, from an externally governed colonial outpost to a self-governed suffrage-based special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. The Basic Law of Hong Kong proposes the eventual election of the Legislative Council and Chief Executive of Hong Kong by some form of universal suffrage. These provisions are at the core of the ‘democratic constitution’ of Hong Kong. Achieving this goal requires consensus between the executive in Hong Kong, members of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, and the legislative body of the People’s Republic of China. Although not a formal constitutional requirement, any democratization efforts will also require popular buy-in from Hong Kong residents in order to function effectively. However, it is increasingly clear that the views of all concerned do not converge on how and when these constitutional aspirations should be realized. In addition, all parties have started moving outside of this constitutional framework when deliberating issues of political reform. This article looks at the problems in the constitutional design of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that have resulted in this political deadlock. The article will then look at one solution to mitigate the effect of these design issues and to move forward again on the issue of reform: ‘litigating’ the democratic constitution in the courts. The article discusses the advantages of the courts in the process: primarily the capacity of the courts to reconstitutionalize political debate on electoral issues. This article evaluates the largely unsuccessful use of the courts thus far by Hong Kong residents to correct and advance political reform. It considers possible reasons for the high failure rate in courts and proposes alternative litigation strategies that can better utilize the position of the courts to re-orient all parties to the Basic Law.

The modest level and differing structure of compensation Japanese corporate executives receive has sparked recent interest in the determinants of executive pay in Japan. One factor that remains unexamined is the role played by Article 361 of the Companies Act which requires that director pay be set by the general shareholders’ meeting. To explore the question of whether this rule, by giving shareholders a veto over changes to compensation they disagree with, matters to pay in Japan, this article examines the results of the shareholders’ meetings of companies listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange that voted on compensation resolutions in 2014. We find that, while all resolutions were approved, there was significant variation in both what pay directors asked for and how shareholders responded that was correlated with differences in each. The results are consistent with the view that the relevance of the rule varies depending on the context of the company. While at most companies, shareholder voting on pay is relatively uncontroversial, the changing structure of ownership and governance at some provides an avenue through which the rule may now matter to pay.

This article argues that the Chinese state has more highly articulated policies to deal with social disturbance than previously recognized by specialists. It does so by highlighting and critically analyzing the policies followed to improve the opportunities for migrant worker representation. The state has adopted a three-pronged policy. It has improved migrant worker rights, encouraged the official unions to help enforce these rights and allowed NGOs to offer certain services. The official unions are encouraged to adopt a legal watchdog role by a combination of legislation and limited external organizational competition. We argue that the dynamic of organizational competition is a previously unrecognized factor in moving China in a ‘socialist corporatist’ direction.