According to The Irrawaddy, the Hluttaw’s Judicial Affairs Committee Chairman Thura Aung Ko has revealed that the committee has received over 10,000 letters of complaints, 90% of which made allegations of corruption. Much of the corruption seems to have involved defendants bringing judges or court staff in order to win favorable outcomes. This is not too surprising given reports of corruption in the judiciary. What is not yet clear is the content of the cases, i.e. if they involve business or human rights disputes. In other words, who is affected most by judicial corruption in Myanmar? Does it have a disproportionate impact in certain types of cases? Hopefully, the committee will release a detailed report containing its full findings.
Judicial Corruption report in Myanmar (Myanmar/Burma)
Comments Off on Judicial Corruption report in Myanmar (Myanmar/Burma)
Filed under Burma, corruption, Hluttaw, Myanmar
Untilting the Playing Field? (Myanmar/Burma)
On Monday, Myanmar’s governing Union Solidarity and Development Party announced that it would support amending § 59(f) of the 2008 Constitution to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to run for president. I share my thoughts on this development in the International Journal of Constitutional Law‘s I-CONnect blog.
On another note, hope everybody reading this has a happy and productive New Year!
Comments Off on Untilting the Playing Field? (Myanmar/Burma)
Filed under amendment, Burma, constitution, Myanmar, USDP
Glass half full or empty for lawyers? (Myanmar/Burma)
The International Commission of Jurists has released a new report about the state of the legal profession in Myanmar. The Irrawaddy provides a nice summary of the report and its key findings. I won’t bother resummarizing the report here, but I do think it worth commenting on a few aspects.
Most of the challenges mentioned in the report are quite similar to those faced by lawyers under military rule (as discussed in Nic Cheesman’s dissertation). In other words, recent political reforms have not necessarily changed the type of problems lawyers face, but has affected the degree to which those problems hinder the work of lawyers. For example, while ICJ still reports instances of government agents harassing human rights lawyers, lawyers do seem to agree that the room for them to operate has expanded considerably.
It is also interesting that reform of the Bar Council has emerged as a key demand. During the era of military rule, the Bar Council seemed to play a relatively minor role and evinced few complaints. Of course, this partly reflects the fact that lawyers can now openly advocate for institutional reform. However, even in private interviews, lawyers often expressed disappointment with the Bar Council or dismissed it as a tool of the government, but seldom pointed to it as one of the most important barriers the legal profession faced.
In a sense, I suspect the focus on the Bar Council reflects the legal profession’s increased interest in mobilizing on behalf of causes. Aside from lawyers associated with the National League for Democracy and other political parties, the legal profession remained relatively unpoliticized before 2011. Few lawyers mobilized on behalf of cause lawyering. Since 2011, more lawyers have participated in legal aid clinics and have protested government legal aid policies. It seems lawyers view Bar Council reform as the next logical step in ensuring that they can mobilize without undue government influence.
Comments Off on Glass half full or empty for lawyers? (Myanmar/Burma)
Filed under Burma, International Commission of Jurists, lawyers, legal profession, Myanmar
School’s no longer out in Burma (Myanmar/Burma)
I served my time in law school and have no desire to return, yet the news that Yangon University will accept 50 new undergraduate law students – the first cohort since 1996 – on December 2* is perhaps the best news I have heard from the country in many months. Previously, the university only offered law degrees through distance learning programs at satellite campuses (see Myint Zan’s 2008 article for a more detailed discussion of the problems with the legal education system). According to The Irrawaddy, Johns Hopkins University, Australian National University, and Dulles University are involved in assisting Yangon University as it revises its curriculum.
The last law curriculum I saw had a heavy emphasis on theory rather than practical skills. It was particularly puzzling to see international and comparative law on the syllabus (presumably because the military viewed those courses as politically innocuous). With the renewal of on-campus classes and continuing legal education (CLE) programs established by BABSEA, Myanmar’s legal education system might finally be starting the long road towards providing law students with the skills the need to thrive in an increasingly dynamic legal system.
* Coincidence that this is also my birthday? I think not.
Comments Off on School’s no longer out in Burma (Myanmar/Burma)
Filed under Burma, education, legal profession, Myanmar
5th Amendment Rights in China? (China)
Yes, I realize that China is not located within Southeast Asia. It is not and never will be a member of ASEAN. Nonetheless, the Chinese Supreme People’s Court’s recent actions might be of interest to students of judicial politics in Southeast Asia.
According to Reuters, he SPC has ruled that the use of torture to extract confessions is illegal. Interestingly, the SPC expanded the definition of torture to “the use of cold, hunger, drying, scorching, fatigue and other illegal methods” (Bush administration lawyers deemed that several of these methods did not to constitute torture).
On the one hand, the announcement is potentially revolutionary. Chinese police and courts have accepted confessions extracted through torture for millennia (the famous Judge Dee stories from the Tang Dynasty include several graphic torture scenes). On the other hand, as Reuters notes, there is likely to be resistance to the SPC’s announcement, especially from the state security system.
The announcement also raises questions about the SPC’s role in China’s legal system. The Court seemed to have a brief Marbury v. Madison moment in 2001 when it seemed to find a constitutional right to education (presumably making China’s 1982 Constitution enforceable). However, that decision also proved to be the last time the SPC interpreted the constitution. In 2010, the SPC officially withdrew the decision, presumably meaning it is no longer legally valid.
While I cannot claim to be an expert in Chinese law or politics, from what I understand the SPC’s current decision regarding torture is not an attempt to return to the activism of its 2001 decision, but rather represents a deliberate choice to focus reforming the system under its control. While the SPC might face resistance, judges do have the final word on accepting illegally obtained evidence, and hence share the blame for convictions obtained through illegal confessions. I suspect at the very least we will see more defendants claiming that their confessions were obtained through torture in the hopes that the judiciary will now act on their claims.
Comments Off on 5th Amendment Rights in China? (China)
Filed under China, Supreme Court, torture
Dominic J. Nardi, Jr. 
You must be logged in to post a comment.