Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Taking the Rule of Law’s Opposition Seriously

  • Article
  • Published:
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

What does it mean to study the rule of law from conditions of its absence? In this response to symposium commentators on Opposing the Rule of Law I suggest that to do so is to situate the rule of law in relation to other ideas without relativizing it; to take seriously questions of what animates practices in its stead, including the question of what ideas might plausibly oppose it. Adopting this mode of inquiry into courts in Myanmar, I perceived that the rule of law is not compatible with law and order, as commonly assumed, but is its asymmetrical opposite. Competing notions of order inhabit each, one endogenous, the other imposed. While the rule of law pushes towards political equality, law and order reveals in itself a deep affiliation with inequality. Opposing the two dispels the illusion that law and order is elementary to the rule of law. It opens up alternative ways of thinking and talking about both that might better equip scholars to discharge a special responsibility: not to research and write in ways that can be readily interpolated into projects for the delivery of the rule of law to places where it is absent, but to compel different types of political action for the rule of law, by provincializing it.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Cheesman (2015a).

  2. Krygier (2006, p. 138).

  3. Myint Zan (2000a, b, c, 2004).

  4. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea (2012, p. 33).

  5. Wedeen (2010, p. 264).

  6. King et al. (1994, ch. 2).

  7. See Cheesman (2015a, p. 17).

  8. Hilbink (2007), Pereira (2005), Moustafa (2007).

  9. Rajah (2012), Massoud (2013).

  10. Krygier (1990, p. 640).

  11. Cheesman (2009).

  12. Hadfield and Weingast (2014, p. 22).

  13. Merry (2017).

  14. Rajah (2012).

  15. See generally Cheesman and Farrelly (2016).

  16. Merry (2017, this issue).

  17. Chua (2015, 2016), Crouch (2016a, b), Crouch and Lindsey (2014), Ho and Chua (2016).

  18. Rajah (2017).

  19. Munger (2012).

  20. Cheesman (2015b).

  21. Rodriguez et al. (2010, pp. 1457, 1464).

  22. Cheesman (2014).

  23. Krygier (2017, this issue).

  24. Krygier (2017); see Cheesman (2015a, p. 7).

  25. Goertz and Mahoney (2012, ch. 5).

  26. Krygier (2017).

  27. Pettit (1997, p. 107).

  28. Cheesman (2015a, p. 262).

  29. Krygier (2017); see Nonet and Selznick (2001, pp. 44–46).

  30. Cheesman (2015a, pp. 102–107).

  31. Chakrabarty (2008, p. 8).

  32. Krygier (2017, this issue).

  33. Ginsburg (2011, p. 225).

  34. Munger (2017, this issue).

  35. Cheesman (2015a, p. 7).

  36. Merry (2017, this issue).

  37. Brown (2005, p. 81).

  38. Oakeshott (1991, p. 44).

  39. Taylor (2016, p. 650).

  40. Wolin (2004, pp. 40–41).

  41. Mouffe (2013, p. x); see also Mouffe (1993).

  42. Schmitt (1985, pp. 12–13, 2008).

  43. Mouffe (2013, p. x).

  44. Steedly (2013, p. 69).

  45. Cheesman (2015a, p. 261).

  46. McCargo (2016, p. 185).

  47. Harcourt (2001).

  48. Popova (2016).

  49. Popova (2016, p. 904).

  50. Cheesman (2015a, p. 261); see also Munger (2015).

  51. Popova (2012, p. 2).

  52. Cheesman (2015a, p. 261).

  53. Krygier (2009).

  54. Krygier (2017).

  55. Krygier (2011, p. 32).

  56. Chakrabarty (2008, pp. xiii, 3–4).

  57. MacLean (2013); see further Scott (1998).

  58. Merry et al. (2015); see, for example, WJP (2014, p. 1).

  59. Cheesman (2015a, pp. 40–45).

  60. See Versteeg and Ginsburg (2016).

  61. Krygier (2017, this issue); see Schatz (2007).

  62. Weizman and Manfredi (2013, p. 172).

  63. Mertz (2002, p. 369).

  64. WJP (2014, p. 4).

  65. Sarat and Silbey (1988).

  66. Sarat and Silbey (1988, p. 99).

  67. Flexner (1939).

References

  • Brown W (2005) At the edge: the future of political theory. Edgework: critical essays on knowledge and politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp 60–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakrabarty D (2008) Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheesman N (2009) Thin rule of law or un-rule of law in Myanmar? Pac Aff 82(4):597–613

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheesman N (2014) Law and order as asymmetrical opposite to the rule of law. Hague J Rule of Law 6(1):96–114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheesman N (2015a) Opposing the rule of law: how Myanmar’s courts make law and order. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cheesman N (2015b) Orderly secrets? Opening Myanmar’s Supreme Court files. Paper presented at the Material Encounters Conference, February 4-6, National Library of Australia, Canberra

  • Cheesman N, Farrelly N (eds) (2016) Conflict in Myanmar: war, politics, religion. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

    Google Scholar 

  • Chua LJ (2015) The vernacular mobilization of human rights in Myanmar’s sexual orientation and gender identity movement. Law Soc Rev 49(2):299–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chua LJ (2016) Negotiating social norms and relations in the micromobilization of human rights: the case of Burmese lesbian activism. Law Soc Inq 41(3):643–669

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crouch M (2016a) The judiciary in Myanmar: beyond reform? In: Farrelly N, Holliday I, Simpson A (eds) Routledge handbook of contemporary Myanmar. Routledge, New York (forthcoming)

    Google Scholar 

  • Crouch M (2016b) Legislating reform? Law and conflict in Myanmar. In: Cheesman N, Farrelly N (eds) Conflict in Myanmar: war, politics, religion. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp 221–241

    Google Scholar 

  • Crouch M, Lindsey T (eds) (2014) Law, society and transition in Myanmar. Hart Publishing, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Flexner A (1939) The usefulness of useless knowledge. Harper’s 179:544–552

  • Ginsburg T (2011) In defense of imperialism? The rule of law and the state-building project. In: Fleming JE (ed) Getting to the rule of law. Nomos 50. New York University Press, New York, pp 224–240

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goertz G, Mahoney J (2012) A tale of two cultures: qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hadfield GK, Weingast BR (2014) Microfoundations of the rule of law. Annu Rev Polit Sci 17:21–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harcourt BE (2001) Illusion of order: the false promise of broken windows policing. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Hilbink L (2007) Judges beyond politics in democracy and dictatorship: lessons from Chile. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ho EL, Chua LJ (2016) Law and ‘race’ in the citizenship spaces of Myanmar: spatial strategies and the political subjectivity of the Burmese Chinese. Ethn Racial Stud 39(5):896–916

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King G, Keohane R, Verba S (1994) Designing social inquiry: scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Krygier M (1990) Marxism and the rule of law: reflections after the collapse of communism. Law Soc Inq 15(4):633–663

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krygier M (2006) The rule of law: an abuser’s guide. In: Sajó A (ed) Abuse: the dark side of fundamental rights. Eleven International Publishing, The Hague, pp 129–161

    Google Scholar 

  • Krygier M (2009) The rule of law: teleology, legality, sociology. In: Palombella G, Walker N (eds) Relocating the rule of law. Hart Publishing, Oxford, pp 45–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Krygier M (2011) Approaching the rule of law. In: Mason W (ed) The rule of law in Afghanistan: missing in inaction. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 15–34

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Krygier M (2017) The rule of law and its rivals. Hague J Rule Law. doi: 10.1007/s40803-016-0043-9

  • MacLean K (2013) The government of mistrust: illegibility and bureaucratic power in socialist Vietnam. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison

    Google Scholar 

  • Massoud MF (2013) Law’s fragile state: colonial, authoritarian, and humanitarian legacies in Sudan. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McCargo D (2016) Duterte’s mediated populism. Contemp Southeast Asia 38(2):185–190

    Google Scholar 

  • Merry SE (2017) What is the rule of law? Perspectives from Myanmar. Hague J Rule Law. doi:10.1007/s40803-016-0041-y

  • Merry SE, Davis K, Kingsbury B (eds) (2015) The quiet power of indicators: measuring governance, corruption, and rule of law. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mertz E (2002) The perfidy of gaze and the pain of uncertainty: anthropological theory and the search for closure. In: Greenhouse CJ, Mertz E, Warren KB (eds) Ethnography in unstable places: everyday lives in contexts of dramatic political change. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 355–378

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mouffe C (1993) Rawls: political philosophy without politics. The return of the political. Verso, London, pp 41–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Mouffe C (2013) Agonistics: thinking the world politically. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Moustafa T (2007) The struggle for constitutional power: law, politics, and economic development in Egypt. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Munger F (2012) Constructing law from development: cause lawyers, generational narratives, and the rule of law in Thailand. In: Gillespie J, Nicholson P (eds) Law and development and the global discourses of legal transfers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 237–276

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Munger F (2015) Thailand’s cause lawyers and twenty-first-century military coups: nation, identity, and conflicting visions of the rule of law. Asian J Law Soc 2(2):301–322

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Munger F (2017) Rule of law inside out in Myanmar. Hague J Rule Law. doi:10.1007/s40803-016-0045-7

  • Myint Zan (2000a) Judicial independence in Burma: constitutional history, actual practice and future prospects. South Cross Univ Law Rev 4:17–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Myint Zan (2000b) Of consummation, matrimonial promises, fault, and parallel wives: the role of original texts, interpretation, ideology and policy in pre- and post-1962 Burmese case law. Columbia J Asian Law 14(1):153–212

    Google Scholar 

  • Myint Zan (2000c) Two divergent Burmese rulings on criminal defendants’ confessions: an ‘ideological analysis’. Univ Tasman Law Rev 19(2):335–353

    Google Scholar 

  • Myint Zan (2004) A comparison of the first and fiftieth year of independent Burma’s law reports. Vic Univ Wellingt Law Rev 35(2):385–426

    Google Scholar 

  • Nonet P, Selznick P (2001) Law and society in transition: toward responsive law. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick

    Google Scholar 

  • Oakeshott M (1991) Political education. Rationalism in politics and other essays. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, pp 43–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Pereira AW (2005) Political (in)justice: authoritarianism and the rule of law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Pettit P (1997) Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Popova M (2012) Politicized justice in emerging democracies: a study of courts in Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Popova M (2016) Book review: Constitutions in authoritarian regimes and Opposing the rule of law: how Myanmar’s courts make law and order. Perspect Pol 14(3):902–904

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rajah J (2012) Authoritarian rule of law: legislation, discourse and legitimacy in Singapore. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rajah J (2017) Enlivening rule of law through law and order. Hague J Rule Law. doi:10.1007/s40803-016-0042-x

  • Rodriguez DB, McCubbins MD, Weingast BR (2010) The rule of law unplugged. Emory Law J 59(6):1455–1494

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarat A, Silbey S (1988) The pull of the policy audience. Law Policy 10(2–3):97–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schatz E (2007) Methods are not tools: ethnography and the limits of multiple-methods research. Political methodology 12, Committee on Concepts and Methods, Mexico City

  • Schmitt C (1985) Political theology: four chapters on the concept of sovereignty (Schwab G, trans). University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  • Schmitt C (2008) Constitutional theory (Seitzer J, trans). Duke University Press, Durham

  • Scott JC (1998) Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Steedly MM (2013) Rifle reports: a story of Indonesian independence. University of California Press, Berkeley

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor RH (2016) Book review: Opposing the rule of law: how Myanmar’s courts make law and order. Asian Stud Rev 40(4):649–650

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Versteeg M, Ginsburg T (2016) Measuring the rule of law: a comparison of indicators. Law Soc Inq. doi:10.1111/lsi.12175

    Google Scholar 

  • Wedeen L (2010) Reflections on ethnographic work in political science. Annu Rev Polit Sci 13:255–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weizman E, Manfredi Z (2013) ‘From figure to ground’: a conversation with Eyal Weizman on the politics of the humanitarian present. Qui Parle Crit Hum Soc Sci 22(1):167–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • WJP (2014) Rule of law index 2014. World Justice Project, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolin SS (2004) Politics and vision: continuity and innovation in western political thought (expanded ed.). Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Yanow D, Schwartz-Shea P (2012) Interpretive research design: concepts and processes. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

In addition to thanking the symposium contributors for their remarks, I would also like to thank Kim Lane Scheppele and students in her 2016 Rule of Law class at Princeton University for their timely questions and observations on Opposing the Rule of Law, and Martin Krygier, Philip Pettit and Ben Schonthal for reading and commenting on a preliminary response to contributors. Thanks also to audience members and colleagues attending events on the book at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, the Law and Society Association’s 2016 annual meeting in New Orleans, and a workshop in Yangon organized by Partners Asia; including Mary Callahan, Melissa Crouch, Terry Halliday, Zunetta Herbert, Sundhya Pahuja, and Andrew Selth. Lastly, I am grateful to Ronald Janse for his encouragement and willingness to publish the symposium.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, Hedley Bull Building, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Nick Cheesman (Fellow, Member (2016–2017)

  2. School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Nick Cheesman (Fellow, Member (2016–2017)

Authors
  1. Nick Cheesman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nick Cheesman.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cheesman, N. Taking the Rule of Law’s Opposition Seriously. Hague J Rule Law 9, 29–44 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-016-0048-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-016-0048-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation