Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order

The neocolonial logics underpinning the “war on drugs” in the Philippines

“…The law plays a key role legitimating authority and the use of public violence. Describing the role criminal courts and procedures played in Myanmar under the authoritarian regime, Nick Cheesman (2015) differentiated between the rule of law and law and order. While the former, according to Cheesman in whatever form it takes, i.e., thin or thicker, offers a limitation to government power, the latter, is a purely instrumental use of the law to justify state repression.…”

“…In the aforementioned facts, there are two key elements about the role that legality plays in the context in which state-sponsored violence is openly used to maintain social order. Firstly, despite the frequency and intensity of the use of extra-legal violence by state agents, there is a constant invocation of the law, which was a similar tactic used by the courts under the authoritarian regime in Myanmar (Cheesman 2015), demonstrating that it remains important for governments to frame their interventions as within the law or carried out within its own legal framework. Furthermore, and a key point demonstrated by Vishnupad (2020), is that no matter how much legality is ignored or neglected in the concrete practices it is never renounced.…”

Royal, colonial and authoritarian legacies in Myanmar prisons of today

“…In 1962, Ne Win declared a general amnesty and established the practice of amnesties as an action the president could perform without consulting with the parliament, as a political issue above the law. With the military regime, Ne Win thus brought back the practice of the kings of Myanmar and demonstrated his sovereignty (Cheesman, 2015;Taylor, 2015). Since Ne Win's first amnesty, amnesties have continuously been granted in connection with significant holidays such as Thingyan and Independence Day.…”

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change: On "legitimate political discourse" in the global twenty-first century

“…But would-be autocrats in the current era increasingly rely on more subtle strategies, manipulating political and media institutions to entrench their power behind a democratic façade (Pirro & Stanley, 2022;Scheppele, 2018). This echoes a longer tradition of "rule by law" in authoritarian and colonial regimes to bolster their authority alongside their use of open violence (Farid, Chapter 6 in this Handbook; see also Cheesman, 2015;Ginsburg & Moustafa, 2008;Massoud, 2013). Its use in colonial regimes is a particularly important tell, for many Euro-American empires have claimed to be democracies "at home" while imposing their rule abroad (see, e.g., Atiles-Osoria, 2012;Baxi, 2000).…”

“…This line of analysis suggests that the relationship between law, movements, and forms of rule deserves much more attention than it has yet received. Rich and growing literatures on authoritarian legality (Chen & Fu, 2022b;Cheesman, 2015;Gallagher, 2017;Hilbink, 2007;Moustafa, 2007;Rajah, 2012) and autocratic legalism (Corrales, 2015; de Sa e Silva, 2022a; 2022b; Pirro & Stanley, 2022;Scheppele, 2018) have documented the many ways that authoritarians mobilize law to entrench and legitimize their power, and some of this literature has examined movements (e.g., Atiles-Osoria, 2012;Chen, 2016;Chua, 2014;Gallagher, 2017;Junge et al, 2021;Massoud, 2013;Ng & Wong, 2017;Tam, 2013). But the focus has overwhelmingly been on how authoritarian states use law to prevent and contain movements that threaten their rule, with relatively little recent scholarship on the ways that mobilization can support authoritarian states (for exceptions see Atiles-Osoria, 2012;.…”