September 19, 2011 · 20:10

A new issue for Myanmar’s Supreme Court – the environment

I’ve often mentioned Myanmar’s Supreme Court on this blog in the context of judicial independence and political opposition. Recently, several Burmese environmentalists and politicians brought a petition before the Court asking it to halt the Myitsone Dam in Kachin State. It seems the plaintiffs are asking the Court to order the government to release more information about the proposed impacts of the dam (writ of quo warrant) and to halt construction of the dam until a cost-benefit analysis is conducted (writ of prohibition). According to Mizzima, independent MP Win Cho said, “If MPs cannot get real information about the Myitsone Dam construction and the possibility of the extinction of Irrawaddy River before the parliament ends, we will file suit.” 
I don’t recall any other cases in the Burmese Supreme Court quite like this one. However, it does coincide with National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent emphasis on environmental issues. Indeed, Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently proposed that environmental issues would be a safer issue for Burma’s political opposition. However, I don’t yet have any idea how the Supreme Court treats environmental issues or whether this petition will have more success. While environmental issues might not be as controversial as political prisoners, the political elite will likely not permit challenges to flagship infrastructure projects to be litigated in court.

UPDATE: It seems the government is split on the Myitsone Dam issue as well, with Thein Sein opposing it. Irrawaddy has an article highlighting some of the interesting – albeit heresy – debate.

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Filed under Burma, environmental, Myanmar, Supreme Court

September 16, 2011 · 18:20

New Philippine SC justice

Yesterday, President Aquino appointed Court of Appeals Justice Estella Perlas Bernabe to the Philippine Supreme Court (for more on her background, see this PhilStar article). Aquino’s already appointed three justices, but he’s not yet at the point of changing the Court’s ideological composition. One of the retirees, Carpio-Morales (now the Ombudsman), was a strong opponent of the Arroyo administration and the lone dissenter in de Castro v. JBC. The other was Eduardo Antonio Nachura, who was seen as supporting of Arroyo. All 12 of the other justices were appointed by Arroyo, although some like Carpio have been known to rule against her. Also, few of the other justices will reach the official retirement age of 70 before Aquino’s term ends in 2016.

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September 13, 2011 · 02:39

Trials of lawyer

The Irrawaddy has another rare look at the life of human rights lawyers in Burma. In today’s edition, there is short article about Pho Phyu, a lawyer who has worked on several human rights cases in Myanmar, from land confiscation victims to child soldiers. Pho Phyu has been arrested several times, most recently when he failed to appear before the court for a trial hearing. He was released when two of his clients – farmers whose land had been confiscated – raised the money to pay bail.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of political science literature about the role of lawyers in fostering judicial independence. However, Charles Epp (whose books are pictured here) claims activist lawyers are at least as a important as activist judges. The demand side for the rule of law is a critical and often overlooked component.

It’s certainly too early to predict anything like a rights revolution in Myanmar. However, it should be interesting to see how Burma’s human rights lawyers use the new Constitutional Tribunal – if they do at all.

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Filed under Burma, lawyers, Myanmar

September 2, 2011 · 04:47

Less lesse is more

I’ve already posted about a few of the ongoing lesse majeste cases in Thailand. What makes Chiranuch Premchaiporn’s case worth mentioning is that there’s some hope she might win. The judge said several times that this case was “nothing” or “no big deal,” strongly implying that he saw no grounds for the prosecution. I’m not that familiar with how judges interact with lawyers and defendants in the courtroom, but those seem like pretty informal comments. New Mandala posted more earlier today.

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August 30, 2011 · 18:40

Wanting Islamic Law

Greg Lopez at the New Mandala blog points to a startling poll showing that over 70% (71.6% to be precise) of Malaysians would want to replace the Federal Constitution with the Quran. Lopez puts this in the context of an increasingly Islamicized Malaysia, although his conclusions are admittedly alarmist. It actually isn’t fairly unusually for Muslims to hold Islamic law in higher regard than their country’s constitution. Unlike secular law, Islamic law is religious law and inherently viewed as morally superior. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the average Muslim approves each tenet of Islamic law, or even understand Shariah. In fact, if we look at the rest of the poll, we find evidence for this proposition. Overwhelming majorities of Malaysians support Islamic law, but very few have actually read the Quran, and even fewer claim to understand its verses. In short, we shouldn’t read too much into the 70% statistic as it might simply indicate that respondents want a more “moral” law, not the specific provisions of Shariah.

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Filed under constitution, Islam, Malaysia, religion