In Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar the authors and editors tackle a broad range of politico-socio-legal issues in Myanmar. Editors Melissa Crouch and Tim Lindsey divide the book into sections on Myanmar’s legal system, its courts, constitutionalism, economic, political, and business reforms, law enforcement, and Myanmar law in regional and comparative perspective. They begin by stating that the book is an attempt to build a “more informed scholarly analysis on the legal system of Myanmar, not least by scholars from Myanmar” (p. 3); and that “any attempt to understand the current transition process and the future of Myanmar’s legal system must be grounded in its social, political and cultural context, past and present” (p. 5).

The book is fit for purpose. It analyses Myanmar’s legal system in its current state of flux, and considers possibilities which have since come to pass – Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party had won 77 percent of seats in Myanmar’s landmark polls in November 2015, ending half a century of dominance by the military in Parliament. This book will be a useful companion to those who seek to understand the implications of this result.

The book’s first chapter is a research guide to Myanmar’s legal system, and suggests where one might find a compilation of Myanmar’s statutes, cases, and other primary and secondary sources. This provides scholars “signposts to legal materials for future research” (p. 21) and remains true to the intent of the book which is to “not…be definitive or exhaustive” (p. 5). To lend context to each chapter, each author provides a historical overview of the topic in question, before moving on to discuss changes that have occurred over the years and possible reforms which ought to take place.

The editors and authors candidly acknowledge where further research can be conducted, if the available research material at the time of publication is thin and difficult to access in the country. As they rightly note:

Similarly, in the chapter analysing the cases in Myanmar’s Supreme Court Docket, from 2007 to 2011, Dominic J Nardi and Lwin Moe candidly acknowledge that “[w]e simply lack the baseline research to know what to expect in the Court’s docket” (p. 111). The authors also “urge other Burmese government agencies to follow the Supreme Court’s lead and post digitally readable copies of legal texts on their websites” (p. 111). True to the objective of the book, the authors conclude with the hope that their work will “stimulate more research by Burmese and foreign scholars into (the) use of Burmese legal language in the Myanmar Law Reports” (p. 111). The chapter thus recognizes that there is much to be done, but provides a useful starting point through its statistical analysis of the types of cases heard by the Supreme Court during this time. This analysis is categorized into judicial, criminal, domestic, inheritance, and contracts and commercial law.

In her chapter, Melissa Crouch provides a historical analysis of Myanmar’s legal system, beginning with the origins of Burmese Law:

followed by the influence of British law during the period of colonial dictatorship. The chapter gives an honest appraisal of the fragile state of constitutional democracy after independence, and the country’s decline into socialism and military rule. Melissa Crouch attributes any reform in the legal system to the “constitutional amendment process, and the outcome of the 2015 elections” (p. 52), and points out that “these development are not taking place in a legal and political vacuum” (p. 52).

In the section that deals with the Myanmar courts, Andrew Huxley recognizes that Burmese law, while predominantly drawn from Buddhist teachings, is mostly “based on secular models, whether those provided by the British Empire during its nineteenth century, or those provided by the Eastern bloc states in the 1970s, or those provided by the globalisation of the 1990s” (p. 59) and how the law has transitioned in this regard. He offers the view at the end of the chapter that “Burma needs to reconnect with its own tradition” (p. 72), which is a thread that runs common throughout the book, i.e. that Myanmar needs to re-embrace its own culture, in order to regain its lost legal heritage. He notes that “[u]p to 1885, Burmese lawyers understood their law by analysing decisions made in the past…[t]o recapture that legal hermeneutic would require that Law Departments teach the analysis of case law…” (p. 72). This statement admits no quarrel.

Nick Cheesman then devotes analysis to offences relating to “the body” encountered in the Law Reports, and divides the chapter into “offensive bodies” (dealing with offences relating to bodily harm); “assembled bodies”(dealing with offences relating to undermining the tranquillity of the State); “gendered bodies” (dealing with offences relating to women); and obscured bodies (bodies “whose presence is felt strongly but goes unacknowledged, or is otherwise not as we might expect to find it” (p.87)). Cheesman eruditely notes that “control over the body of the accused failed to translate…into control over the colony itself” (p. 90).

David C William’s chapter sets out how Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution fails to meet prescribed standards of democracy, particularly how the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) and the president have dominant control over almost every institution in the country. He describes the constitution as “at best a murky smear of light on the horizon” (p. 138) and rallies the international community to “illumine the whole document, with all of its technicalities, rather than merely those provisions that are easily understood in the space of a two-minute sound bite” (p. 138).

Melissa Crouch sets out to show how the 2008 Constitution “reintroduces the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to hear applications for...constitutional writs” (p. 141), which “has the potential to contribute to a culture of government accountability” (p. 141). In particular, she traces “the development of administrative law in Myanmar during the period of parliamentary democracy” (p. 141) and contrasts it “with the reintroduction of the constitutional writs by the quasi-civilian government” (p. 141), which came into power in 2011. She reveals that the post-2011 rulers in Myanmar have allowed a more controlled form of constitutional writs to be issued, as compared to the 1947 Constitution which provided for more extensive “rights of constitutional remedies” (p. 142).

Anna Dziedzic and Cheryl Saunders provide an excellent comparison of Myanmar’s constitutional development to that of other post-conflict countries, and the lessons that can be learnt from their experience. They consider the role that ASEAN can play in Myanmar’s constitutional law-making process. However, the significance of the soon to be launched ASEAN Economic Community is overlooked and would have lent to a more textured analysis. In the same vein, Catherine Shanahan Renshaw, in the last section of the book, points out that ASEAN’s institutions and sectoral bodies (including the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights) have a major role to play in Myanmar’s democratic transition. An analysis of how this highlights the need for effective access to remedies, and reinforces cross-border litigation and enforcement in the region, would have been valuable.

Sean Turnell’s chapter analyses the many legislative changes relating to economic reforms, including the Foreign Investment Law, the Central Bank Law, Microfinance Law, and the Special Economic Zone Law. The chapter provides an overview of the benefits and shortfalls of these laws. Nevertheless, the Myanmar Citizens Investment Law (which regulates investments carried out by citizens) and the Foreign Investment Law (which regulates carried out by foreigners) could have been contrasted. Alternatively, the draft Myanmar Investment Law, which, if enacted, is envisioned to amalgamate the earlier mentioned laws, could have been examined. In particular, the Myanmar Investment Law allows domestic and foreign investors alike to resort to a range of dispute resolution measures against the state. Such analysis would have lent a complete picture to Myanmar’s ever-changing economic landscape.

Similarly, Melinda Tan’s chapter on company law reform in Myanmar, which analyses the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration’s current initiative to modernize the Myanmar Companies’ Act 1914 with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank and the law firm Baker and McKenzie, and Tun Zaw Mra’s chapter on the Securities Exchange Law, could have been juxtaposed with contemporary developments – for example, the plethora of investment laws and regulations (the Foreign Investment Rules, and Special Economic Zone Rules), and the regulatory purpose and reach of the modern Myanmar Investment Commission.

An important area of reform which is addressed by Michael Liduaer and Giles Saphy is electoral reform. It provides a comprehensive overview of Myanmar’s electoral history (or lack thereof), and goes on to describe the various forms of elections in Myanmar, and the related procedures and institutions in the electoral process. The authors note that Myanmar civil society has “re-emerged at the local level with the provision of services that the state did not provide, such as education and health” (p. 214). The authors acknowledge that many of the electoral reforms may not be implemented or effective by the 2015 elections, as:

Nonetheless, their views and recommendations are prescient.

In the last section of the book, Andrew Selth focuses on police reform in Myanmar and analyses its relationship with the Tatmadaw. Given that the police force was “the principle component of the British administration’s coercive apparatus” (p. 272), comparative analysis on this topic, to other jurisdictions that have been the subject of British rule (e.g. India) would have been useful. Kyaw Soe Lwin analyses industrial disputes in Myanmar, and the different ways in which workers have attempted to resolve them. While he highlights that Thein Sein’s administration has allowed significant labour reforms, he, like many of the authors in this volume, exercises caution and refrains from saying that the reforms are emblematic of true progress in workers’ rights.

The best-known ethnic conflict in Myanmar is that between the Rohingya people, an ethnic Muslim minority in the Rakhine state, and the Buddhist Myanmar government. Nicholas Farrelly and Alistair Cook draw attention to the conflict-affected Kachin state, where the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is made up of ethnic minorities, and the Myanmar Army were involved in violence after 2011 after the “ceasefire agreement between the [KIA] and the Tatmadaw” (p. 323) dissolved, including the humanitarian efforts that have been taken by the international community to alleviate the effects of this conflict. Importantly, this chapter reminds the reader of the underlying racial and religious tensions that exist in this very diverse country.

Tim Lindsey draws an interesting comparison between Myanmar and Indonesia. He describes both countries as “complex and fragmented societies” (p. 344) and as being of “significant cultural influence in Southeast Asia” (p. 344). While the chapter also recognizes important differences between the countries (Indonesia having a single unifying language, Bahasa Indonesia, while Myanmar lacks the same), it also identifies important similarities between the two countries: for example, “illegal exploitation of resources and excessive legal extraction” (p. 345), and rule by “authoritarian, army-backed regimes” (p. 346). Lindsey recommends that Myanmar view contemporary Indonesia as a role-model. The author pointedly remarks that:

Andrew Harding ends the book by unifying the various themes and issues considered in the book, and cautions that:

The reader is reminded that Myanmar may slide back “into the authoritarian process if the reform process went badly” (p. 395). This sums up the underlying note of caution that sounds throughout this book. After all, although Ms. Aung Sun Su Kyi’s NLD party won a landslide victory at the polls in 2015, the military, which has ruled Myanmar one way or another for five decades, continues to wield considerable power. Harding’s chapter provides a fitting conclusion to a magisterial book that expertly analyses several developments in modern Myanmar.