ALSA 2025 meeting

We are pleased to share several important materials prepared for the ALSA 2025 Annual Meeting. The Local Organizing Committee has kindly prepared the Conference Handbook and Excursion Information, and we are also providing a PDF list-version of the program generated from the current Pretalx schedule.

All files can be accessed here:

Google Drive (Handbook, Excursion Info, Program List PDF):
Please download from Here

Please note:

• The Handbook file is quite large (approximately 30 MB), so we recommend accessing and downloading it from a computer rather than a mobile device.
• The program list in the Drive folder is the almost final version, but it will be updated from time to time. Anyway, the Pretalx program table will remain the official and authoritative version.
• Abstracts and presentation files can only be downloaded through the Pretalx schedule page:
  ALSA Program Table

Opening Plenary Session — Day 1 (9:15–10:15)
Moderator: Program Committee Chair

1. Welcoming Remarks
Dean Dahliana Hasan, S.H., M.Tax, Ph.D.
Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada

2. Address by the ALSA President
Professor Yoshitaka Wada

3. Keynote Speech
"Law, Social Justice, and Development in Indonesia"
Dr. Herlambang Perdana Wiratraman
Universitas Gadjah Mada

4. Administrative Announcements
Organizing Committee

5. Group Photo
Taken from the stage toward the audience

In entering the metaverse, we do not leave our moral selves behind. My chapter explores the socio-legal complexities of avatar harassment in immersive virtual worlds (i.e., "Zwischenwelten" – world in between), grounding its inquiry in humanistic commitment and narrative imagination. Using the allegorical scaffolding of Alice in Wonderland, it looks at how seemingly fictional acts nonetheless penetrate deeply into the emotional and psychological lives of real persons. Through "three acts," the chapter moves from the inward sphere of individual ethical responsibility (Act I), to the structural dynamics of technological and legal governance (Act II), and finally toward a vision of the metaverse as a self-sustaining ethical community (Act III). The analysis resists both technocratic reduction and the distorting lens of moral panic, insisting instead on the centrality of cultivated moral capacities: responsibility, empathy, and the ability to see others – avatar or not – as ends in themselves. By entwining fundamental legal tenets with observable experience, the chapter invites a rethinking of law and governance not as mere tools for social order, but rather as an empowering architecture for individual agency in present and future virtual societies, not in the sense of egoist exclusivity but in the sense of duties and obligations in the social.

The Special Region of Yogyakarta is known as a region with cultural distinctiveness and a unique government system, where the Yogyakarta Palace (Keraton Yogyakarta) remains a symbol of power and a cultural center. One of the important entities in the cultural and administrative structure of the Yogyakarta Palace is the “Abdi Dalem” - traditional employees who serve the Sultan. In the context of Yogyakarta's specialty, the “Abdi Dalem” act as custodians of cultural heritage as well as technical executors of traditional government. However, until now, the existence of “Abdi Dalem” has not fully obtained legal certainty regarding their rights as workers, especially in the aspects of wages, social security, and employment status. This research aims to analyze arrangements, practices, constraints, and formulate regulatory recommendations to strengthen legal protection of the employment rights of “Abdi Dalem”. The main objective is to develop a contextual and adaptive legal protection model, which is able to bridge the cultural values of the Palace with the fulfillment of workers rights properly. The method used is an empirical/sociological juridical approach, with data collection techniques in the form of literature review, field studies, and document analysis. Through this approach, it is hoped that a comprehensive understanding of the factual conditions of the “Abdi Dalem” will be obtained, as well as formulating legal formulations that are inclusive and equitable.

Keywords: “Abdi Dalem”, Yogyakarta Privilege System, Employment Rights, Labor Law,

Science-based regulations are typically based on a vague statutory mandate that requires the agency to set standards or take actions at the point when risks are identified. Within such process, regulatory knowledge is created, circulated, and made into patterns by concrete and sophisticated technical rules produced by structured and ‘objective’ approaches. Such ‘standardization’ produces clear-cut, commensurable rules and creates expectation for the general public, acting as a crucial means of knowledge communication. Meanwhile, it incorporates authorized expertise in certain fields to improve the quality of administrative decision making, striving for truth and correctness in achieving better regulation. However, the trend of standardization in modern regulations comes with the tyranny of science-dominated and number-based rationality, creating potential injustice between the knowledgeable few and the vast majority.

While science-based regulatory frameworks universally feature instruments with similar functions of standardizing regulatory knowledge, their constructions of regulatory objectivity can be varied, influenced by different traditions of the Rule of Law. Drawing on Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s conceptions about mechanical objectivity and trained judgment, this article explores how environmental governance defines and pursues objective knowledge within the U.S. and China, principally in the domain of administrative rulemaking. By examining their pollution control regimes and underlying rationales, this article highlights the contrasting approaches to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science-based regulations. This comparison reveals how regulatory structures are informed by different notions of Rule of Law, which are guided by the seemingly universal, but intrinsically varying constructions of objectivity.

Key Words: Standardization; Expert Administration; Regulatory Objectivity; The Rule of Law

As a critical institutional arrangement for China’s border governance, the realization of legal equity in the border residents’ trade policy is inherently tied to the specificity of border space. From the perspective of legal geography, this paper examines the equity realization mechanisms of the policy, grounded in practices from the China-Myanmar and China-Laos border regions. Findings reveal that the policy, through differentiated rights allocation based on "border resident identity" (granting permanent residents within 0–20 kilometers of China’s land border a daily tax-free allowance of 8,000 yuan per person), is essentially a "spatial justice" response of law to the specificity of border space, aiming to bridge the development gap between border areas and inland regions.
However, in practice, the "border resident identity-border space" splice has been utilized by multiple stakeholders, with chief beneficiary gradually shifting from border residents to domestic and foreign cargo owners and other parties. This has resulted in a misalignment between legal subjects (border residents) and actual beneficiaries, triggering equity imbalances. In response, the policy promotes rebalancing through a dynamic adjustment mechanism: on the one hand, regulating market order with rigid measures such as strengthened supervision and combating smuggling; on the other hand, by using flexible methods such as moving physical transaction processes to online spaces, effectively eliminating information imbalance, thus ensuring transparency of border residents' income, compliance of market entities, and the order of national tax collection.
In summary, the legal equity of the border residents’ trade policy is essentially a dynamic outcome of interactions between space and law. Through the benign interaction between law and space, the multiple equity objectives of "increasing border residents’ income, ensuring entity compliance, and maintaining border stability" will ultimately be achieved.

Government lawyers, particularly those working for local governments such as cities and countries, remain a surprisingly unexplored area in the study of legal professions, despite their deep engagements in local governance and their expected role of upholding the rule of law within the government.
This presentation explores the pivotal role of government lawyers in shaping public policy and interpreting the law, with a particular focus on local government attorneys. While lawyers have long been recognized as key players in influencing the law, there is a notable gap in the literature examining the contributions of lawyers within government, especially at the local level. By drawing on interviews with city attorneys from Japan and the U.S., this study provides a U.S.Japan comparative analysis of how government lawyers navigate the structural, cultural, and political landscapes of their respective countries. Despite the differences in legal frameworks, this comparison reveals essential aspects of government lawyers’ roles, responsibilities, and challenges in democratic societies. The presentation will highlight the ways in which these attorneys balance their legal duties with organizational demands, ultimately shedding light on their unique influence within public bureaucracies.

Unresolved maritime boundaries—commonly referred to as “grey areas”—pose persistent legal and strategic challenges for Indonesia, particularly in zones like Tanjung Datu, where maritime claims overlap with Malaysia under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This paper introduces the GRIHAM-LAW (Grey Area Integrated Maritime and Homeland Law Enforcement and Watch) model as a conceptual and operational framework to address these challenges. Using doctrinal and normative legal analysis, the study explores the structural ambiguity in Indonesia’s maritime border governance, focusing on legal inconsistencies, unclear baselines, and divergent interpretations of entitlements under international law. These complexities have created jurisdictional vacuums that hinder effective law enforcement, open space for illegal activities such as unauthorized fishing and smuggling, and exacerbate tensions in bilateral relations. The GRIHAM-LAW model emphasizes integrated maritime and homeland surveillance, provisional enforcement arrangements, and joint monitoring mechanisms to mitigate risks while promoting legal certainty. Drawing on comparative regional practices and Indonesia’s own multi-agency maritime governance experience, the paper offers policy recommendations aimed at strengthening enforcement coordination, building trust, and protecting national interests without violating international obligations. Ultimately, this model advocates a pragmatic, law-based approach to grey area management that bridges the gap between sovereignty assertion and cooperative regional order.

In China’s current governance of irregular migration, administrative authorities operate primarily through “living law,” despite the presence of formal statutes. Statutory texts such as the Exit-Entry Administration Law and the Regulations on the Administration of the Entry and Exit of Foreigners provide only broad legal frameworks. In practice, enforcement relies on a patchwork of regulations and administrative policies issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the National Immigration Administration, and local governments—such as the Work Regulations on Repatriation Institutions for Illegal Migrants, the Public Security Regulations on the Hotel Industry, and local action plans targeting “foreigners involved in illegal entry, illegal residence, and illegal employment.” These instruments form an efficiency-oriented yet procedurally deficient system of governance, reflecting a structural condition of “absent law.”

Drawing on the socio-legal theory of “absent law,” this paper analyzes how China governs irregular migration through a functionally autonomous but legally subordinate order—an institutionalized system composed of administrative rules and policy instruments that, while grounded in law, operate with limited procedural oversight.

While this system enhances short-term administrative capacity, it generates three categories of risk: (1) institutional risk, as heavy reliance on sub-statutory norms may blur rule-based governance and divert attention from the core principles of statutory law; (2) rights-based risk, as limited access to remedies and challenges in securing substantive relief reveal structural gaps in procedural justice; and (3) reputational risk, as opaque enforcement may undermine judicial credibility and harm China’s international human rights image.

By examining this configuration of legal marginalization, the paper argues that although statutory law offers a principled framework, irregular migration is largely governed through sub-statutory rules and policy guidelines—creating a system where law exists in text but is functionally displaced by administrative norms in practice.

The legal profession in China is increasingly embracing technology. Since the 2010s, a new type of law firm, commonly known as “internet-promoted firms” (IPFs), has emerged as a significant force, particularly in areas such as debt collection, personal injury, and labor disputes. These IPFs typically collaborate with online platforms and legal consulting companies, entities that are not regulated by the bar association or the justice bureau, to market their services through search engines like Baidu and popular apps such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The lack of stringent regulation on these practices has led to problems such as unfulfilled promises to clients, fraudulent or exaggerated credentials, and irresponsible representations. Furthermore, the rise of IPFs has considerably driven down the prices of individual legal services, eliciting numerous complaints from traditional law firms. This trend has also depressed the salaries of early-career lawyers and exacerbated their already challenging working conditions.

Among Southeast Asian countries, the forestry law established the concept of protected areas, influenced by colonization. The Thai legal system has undermined the indigenous peoples’ right to land for two primary reasons. First, the Thai State claimed that Thailand had never been colonized. Hence, Thailand has no indigenous peoples. Second, a rigid civil law mentality that denied customary law, which guaranteed the right of people to participate in the traditional management of natural resources. We can have indigenous communities, also known as forest protectors. This study notes that the monitoring system still requires proven communities that have the potential to protect forest areas through their traditional management.

In early 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the ministerial resolution verifying rights is merely an administrative action, not justified by law. This ruling remains subject to challenge. Meanwhile, forced evictions and lawsuits for damages to natural resources continue. The Thai legal system has three courts established to protect the people’s rights: the Constitutional Court, the Administrative Court, and the Court of Justice. The Military Court, however, should not concern civilians. However, during the Military Coup, the military government and the civilian government both had the military’s influence through the “reclaim forest areas” project. The Judiciary shows that it cannot be the forest people’s protection mechanism.

In Indonesia, the legal system, including Adat Law, protects the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands. Remark Constitutional Court case number 35/2012 has guaranteed. The government’s process for verifying rights appears to be similar to Thailand’s. This right is a constitutional right, identical to those in Thailand. Then, why is the consequence different? This study will compare the process of verifying rights and the legal system that supports the indigenous people’s rights to land and their social movement.

Have you ever posted an aesthetic picture using your favourite music in the background and received a warning about IP-sensitive content or a copyright infringement warning? While the innovative adaptation of digital tools increases creation, it also causes high levels of IPR infringement due to quick and easy access. Limited territorial protection of I.P. rights, expensive enforcement and registration mechanisms, and unavailability of adequate legal advice & awareness are the crucial roadblocks in unlocking the total potential commercial value of the creation for their respective creators.

The availability of varied dispute resolution mechanisms by I.C.A.N.N. and W.I.P.O. has proven to be a massive success in recent times, especially in catering for the complexities related to I.P. rights, such as domain name disputes and commercial licensing disputes.

Recent developments in the dispute redressal mechanism show great potential for resolving the Intellectual Property Infringement dispute, paving the way for more vigorous enforcement under the IPR regime. Technological advancement in various digital and AI tools, including but not limited to ODR platforms, Data Analytics, data-driven reports for easy decision-making, pattern tracking, etc., contains the potential to streamline the IPR dispute resolution mechanism to increase its strength and efficiency by lowering the cost and increasing access.

This paper is an attempt to analyse the applicability of the evolving Indian dispute resolution mechanism for resolving IPR disputes using AI tools. It will also compare the new-age resolution models adopted by other foreign jurisdictions to cater to IPR disputes. This paper will conclude by providing various suggestions and potential models best suited for Indian needs to deal with the increasing menace of I.P.R. infringement using new-age tools.

This article reappraises Jean Carbonnier’s Sociologie Législative as a resource for understanding the legislative process in Indonesia. One of the leading figures of French legal thought, Carbonnier considered the law not a closed, rationalist system, but a social practice enmeshed in cultural and moral conditions. His Sociologie Législative theory views law as the result of social negotiation and informal influence (infra-droit), as opposed to a technical or politically neutral mechanism.
However, even though it has been the seminal writing on continental legal thought, notably but not limited to French thought, Carbonnier’s work is hardly yet explored in Anglophone scholarship and entirely unnoticed in the Indonesian legal literature This linguistic and geographical gap is unfortunate, especially given the structural similarities between the Indonesian and French legal systems, both rooted in civil law traditions that prioritize legislation as a primary legal source. Yet, the Indonesian setting is also uniquely complex: legal pluralism, competing religious and customary norms, and the fragmented nature of the state.
This study explores how Jean Carbonnier’s Sociologie Législative conceptualizes the legislative process, how it differs from other socio-legal theories, and to what extent it can be meaningfully applied to Indonesia’s plural and postcolonial legal context. It also examines the theoretical and practical challenges of adopting a European framework in a setting shaped by religious, customary, and political negotiations. Methodologically, the researcher applies a doctrinal-comparative approach by examining acts, explanatory notes, and judicial decisions as well as by exploring critical literature in legal theory. It suggests that a return to Carbonnier’s legislative sociology may provide new insights as to how legal norms are contested in Indonesia, as well as what a re-contextualization of such a theoretical tool in the context of the current complex legal world requires.

Transnational employment contracts play an important role as legal basis for cross-border employment relations, which are increasing in Asia in recent years. These relations give rise to a number of legal issues, particularly in transnational labour disputes area. Indonesian Courts are increasingly confronted with industrial relations cases involving foreign elements. In many cases, the legal facts suggest that foreign law could be applicable, indicating that such cases fall within the scope of private international law.

Although private international law in field of employment has developed rapidly in Europe or even Asia, Indonesian Courts do not seem to fully understand the transnational characteristics disputes resolution. Indonesian Courts still tend to apply Indonesian Law directly without sufficient analysis of the elements of foreign law.

One concrete example is the Supreme Court Decision Number 38 K/Pdt.Sus-PHI/2015 and 616 K/Pdt.Sus-PHI/2014. Although there are a number of legal facts that lead to the application of South Korean law (such as the nationality of the workers, the employer place of establishment, the place where the employment contract was signed, or even an implied choice of law), the Indonesian Court still does not take these legal facts into account and only depends on Indonesian Law. This continued judicial pattern might risks the neglect of parties contractual expectations and the protection of workers normative rights.

For this reason, a juridical-dogmatic research is necessary to examine and evaluate the Indonesian Court Decisions in comparison with foreign courts decisions. This research may help Indonesian courts use legal instruments and methods for determining the applicable law that are commonly used in multilateralism approaches within private international law principles. Determining the applicable law is crucial to avoid applying irrelevant laws and to protect workers from risks due to imbalance bargaining power.

Over the past two decades, Japan’s legal profession has experienced significant growth in lawyer numbers, yet this growth has been concentrated in metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Osaka. In contrast, many regional bar associations have seen a sharp decline in new lawyer registrations, with 13 associations averaging fewer than two new members annually in recent years. Simultaneously, Japan is facing a dramatic demographic shift: by 2045, its population will have declined by over 20%, with more than 35% aged 65 or older, and a significant increase in elderly living alone—especially in rural areas.
This paper analyzes how such demographic and geographic imbalances will affect legal service availability across Japan by 2045. Based on population forecasts by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research and lawyer population simulations by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, I propose three scenarios for regional lawyer distribution. Even under the most optimistic model, certain prefectures will face dire shortages, with each lawyer theoretically responsible for over 7,000 residents—many of whom are elderly and legally vulnerable.
Contrary to the assumption that population decline reduces legal demand, I argue that legal needs will diversify and intensify, especially in elder law, estate planning, preventive legal services, and public law issues involving municipalities. To address these challenges, this paper advocates for a multi-layered strategy involving the deployment of public-sector lawyers (e.g., Japan Legal Support Center’s staff attorneys), stronger coordination with local welfare networks, legal technology platforms, and rational restructuring of regional bar associations.
The paper underscores the urgent need to shift from an individual responsibility model to an institutional one, ensuring that legal professionals remain a central component of Japan’s social infrastructure in an era of demographic transformation.

Legislation is the cornerstone of governance—it not only codifies societal norms and structures but also delineates the boundaries within which public life unfolds. Although legal texts are often seen as universal instruments intended for every citizen, a closer examination of the legislative process reveals that they are rarely addressed to an undifferentiated audience. Instead, lawmakers craft these texts with a specific “ideal‐typical” addressee in mind. This paper interrogates a fundamental question: for whom should legislation truly be written?
Drawing upon the theory of participatory democracy, the analysis challenges the conventional assumption of universal accessibility. Participatory democracy upholds transparency, inclusiveness, and active citizen engagement in shaping policy—ideals that suggest legislative texts should primarily address the general audience. Yet, as legal frameworks have grown more complex, the practice of legislative drafting has increasingly shifted toward a technical approach that demands specialized expertise. This evolution raises a metaphorical question: in pursuing the ideals of participatory democracy, should legislative drafting be systematic, precise, and in unambiguous language—or have a narrative style and everyday language that render the law more accessible and meaningful?
To address this issue, the paper is organized as follows. Part One examines the ideal-typical audiences of legislative texts and the implications of their distinct informational needs. Part Two explores how a functional approach—focusing on the intended regulatory impact—should guide the selection of a default addressee, particularly regarding the distinction between legislative outputs and outcomes. Part Three investigates the interplay between technical legal language and participatory democratic ideals, and Part Four considers legislative drafting as a dual process: prescriptive for the legal community and informative for the broader public, highlighting how supplementary materials can bridge the gap between legal precision and public comprehension.

"Capital Drug Laws in Asia" was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2025. The book offers a critical examination of the laws and policies governing the control of illicit drugs in various Asian jurisdictions. It focuses particularly on the strategies employed to address drug-related offences, with a special emphasis on the use of the death penalty. A range of jurisdictions—especially in Southeast Asia—have been deliberately selected to highlight the diversity of approaches within the “war on drugs” debate.

Key areas examined include the use of criminal law to combat drug offences, the motivations behind drug offenders, public support for punitive sanctions, the structure and interpretation of relevant laws, procedural rights of the accused, the use of mandatory versus discretionary sentences, and the imposition of the death penalty.

Six contributing authors will present the main themes of their respective chapters as well as offer their reflections, updates, and insights drawn from their ongoing research related to the book’s central themes.

This paper seeks to provide conceptual and empirical justifications for conducting civil servant disobedience to curb bureaucratic pathology. Various civil servants have long complained about facing illegal instructions from their superiors. It is a recurring problem in many places in Indonesia. Thus, the problem shall be seen as a bureaucratic pathology rather than a maladministration. As reporting them to legal enforcers may be too risky, the disobedience can be done by refusing to cooperate with superiors who give illegal instructions. The term 'superiors' here focuses on positions in government held by politicians, temporary positions obtained through elections, i.e., President, Governor, Mayor, Regent, or temporary political positions given through appointment to a particular person, such as a Minister. There are four arguments to conduct bureaucrat disobedience. First, the conceptual justification long rooted in civil disobedience can be adapted to bureaucrats. Second, legal justification dictates that civil servants' loyalty is not to their superiors but primarily to society and the law. Third, cost and benefit analysis based on several court decisions revealed that the benefits to bureaucrats of following illegal instructions from politicians are not worth comparing to the risks and sanctions. Fourth, from a religious sociological perspective, religion requires obedience only to God, not servitude to man or worldly interests. The article also provides several different variants of civil disobedience in Indonesia, which are based on research and respondents. The offered justifications to conduct civil servant disobedience here may be used for the Indonesian context and as food for thought for any country facing similar situations.

This research examines the complex relationship between Housing, Land, and Property (HLP) rights and transitional justice in Indonesia from the fall of Suharto in 1998 to 2024. During the initial stages of this transition, the need for transitional justice regarding HLP rights was recognized in the 1998 constitutional reform agenda. This was solidified when the People's Consultative Assembly adopted Resolution No. IX/2001 on Agrarian Reform and Natural Resource Management. However, issues related to HLP rights have remained contentious and largely unresolved.

This study investigates how attempts to address past injustices concerning HLP rights have succeeded or failed in alleviating grievances. It highlights both the symbolic and material aspects of justice in HLP claims, focusing on community-led advocacy aimed at rectifying past injustices related to customary land rights in Indonesia. Furthermore, this research explores how efforts to remedy these past injustices are impacted when the state halts or is unable to enforce transitional justice mechanisms. It also examines the tensions that arise between grassroots demands and state-led development agendas in the policymaking process surrounding transitional justice.

As an early stage of a Ph.D. research project on this topic, this paper will primarily focus on providing a literature review on the topic and will employ doctrinal research to analyze existing laws, regulations, and jurisprudence relevant to the legal framework, mechanisms, and institutional design of transitional justice concerning HLP rights in Indonesia. The findings emphasize the necessity for inclusive, culturally sensitive, and participatory frameworks that integrate HLP concerns into transitional justice processes.

The economic development model that Bangladesh has pursued soon after its independence over fifty years ago prioritized export oriented industrial development courting foreign investments at the expense of promoting domestic economies including sustainable rural agriculture regardless of whether those investments benefit Bangladeshis. This article posits that Bangladesh’s economic development is only possible through a genuine agricultural revolution, as was contemplated at the time of its independence, that was thwarted by structural adjustments policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank and its sole focus on export-oriented industrialization. Bangladesh remains an agrarian based economy, with over 40% of the population engaged in farming. As an alternative to Bangladesh’s future, this article offers agro-ecology as a sustainable economic development framework for Bangladesh which is consistent with its constitutional protections for peasants and agriculture as well as the guaranteed right to a livelihood. An ecological based agrarian policy also has the potential to address gendered labor roles that displace rural women workers to urban areas in service of export-oriented industries. Finally, this article offers Nayakrishi Andolon, New Agricultural Movement as an empirically proven pathway towards an equitable and ecological future.

"Memory laws" refer to a body of legal norms and practices that seek to institutionalize the remembrance of historically significant events, with the aim of shaping and preserving the collective memory of a nation or its people. Prior studies have classified memory laws according to their functions or objectives, distinguishing between:
(a) Laws that stipulate criminal penalties for expression that deviates from the official interpretation of significant historical events, and
(b) Legal frameworks designed to preserve the memory of specific historical events without the imposition of criminal sanctions.
Subsequent research has further categorized memory laws into self-inculpatory and self-exculpatory types. Existing scholarship has primarily focused on the legitimacy of institutionalizing historical memory, the actors responsible for this process (e.g., legislatures, courts, historians, or society at large through the "marketplace of ideas"), as well as the methods used to establish official narratives.
The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze instances of memory law within Japan's legal system using the analytical frameworks developed in previous studies. Through this analysis, the paper seeks to offer insights into the future trajectory of memory laws in Japan.

The legal age of candidacy acts as a barrier that prevents youth from participating in politics as representatives. In Japan, the candidacy age has been relatively high compared to other countries: 25 years old for most elections and 30 years old for elections to the House of Councilors and for prefectural governors. The candidacy age has become a widely debated issue worldwide in recent years. Although there had been little discussion in Japan about lowering it, judicial and political attention to this issue has recently begun to emerge. Despite the growing interest, there is a lack of empirical research—both in Japan and in other countries—on how voters perceive the candidacy age and youth politicians. What do voters think about very young politicians?
To address this question, I conducted two original surveys. The first survey directly asked 3,515 Japanese citizens whether they support lowering the age of candidacy. The second survey employed an experimental design, presenting respondents with various fictional politician profiles to assess how a candidate’s young age influences respondents’ preferences. The findings from these surveys suggest that the Japanese public does not really support the current candidacy age thresholds of 25 or 30. Rather, there appears to be significant public support for lowering the age of candidacy. Notably, support is even stronger among young respondents (aged 18–29)—those most directly affected by the current age restrictions.

I will be presenting the main theme of my chapter in the book as well as offer my reflections, updates, and insights drawn from my ongoing research related to the book's central themes.

I will be presenting the main theme of my chapter in the book as well as offer my reflections, updates, and insights drawn from my ongoing research related to the book's central themes.

I will be presenting the main theme of my chapter in the book as well as offer my reflections, updates, and insights drawn from my ongoing research related to the book's central themes

This paper examines how litigation is contributing to the ongoing dynamics of Japan’s energy transition by compensating for weak procedural justice and limited public participation in policymaking. Focusing on two current cases—the Rokkasho reprocessing plant (pending) and the Kobe coal-fired power plant—the analysis contrasts nuclear and thermal energy governance to explore how citizens and lawyers mobilize courts to challenge the lack of transparency in the decision-making, constrained deliberation, and technocratic lock-in. Drawing on environmental justice theory, particularly the procedural dimension, the paper argues that litigation in Japan is not merely reactive but constitutive of a form of environmental citizenship—where judicial spaces enable civic voice, intergenerational claims, and democratic accountability in an otherwise closed policy environment.

Thailand’s rich biodiversity and deep-rooted traditional knowledge provide a strong foundation for the development of Geographical Indications (GIs), which link distinctive local products to their specific geographic origins. GIs are recognised as community rights, ensuring equitable benefit distribution and strengthening local identity. The importance and benefits of GIs have attracted considerable attention from the Thai government, making Thailand one of the leading ASEAN member states in strengthening GI protection. Thailand has a sui generis Geographical Indications Protection Act, adopted in 2003, which entered into force in 2004. As of January 2025, Thailand has registered 247 GI products, including 224 domestic GIs that cover all 77 provinces, achieving the goal of at least one GI per province. Additionally, nine Thai GI products have gained international recognition through registration in seven foreign jurisdictions, including the European Union, reflecting growing global appreciation for Thailand’s unique products.

GIs serve as powerful tools for sustainable development by enhancing economic opportunities, preserving cultural heritage, and supporting environmental stewardship. GIs address the three core dimensions of sustainability, namely, economic, social, and environmental, by fostering rural development, attracting investment, boosting tourism, and creating employment. In Thailand, GIs empower communities by reinforcing local identity, promoting equitable benefit-sharing, and supporting community-led development. This results in increased income, cultural heritage preservation, and environmental conservation, advancing Thailand’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, this study aims to explore the development of GIs in Thailand, highlights key achievements, and examines challenges and opportunities for leveraging GIs as strategic tools for sustainable development. The findings contribute to understanding how GIs can promote economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainability in Thailand and outline possible paths forward for strengthening the role of GIs in advancing the country’s long-term sustainability goals.

Currently, we are going through a process where regulation is being devolved to the private sector. Contracts are increasingly being used as a tool to regulate social relationships. Scholars comment that social regulation is moving toward a regulation without government era, especially in advanced industrial democracies. Among the private entities, insurers have long been involved in successful regulation regarding tort misconduct. For example, in America, evidence shows that liability insurers play a positive governance role in regulating the misconduct behaviors of private actors such as gasoline tank owners and public actors like police. In Canada, automobile insurance is regarded as a social contract that regulates automobile disputes to safeguard public interests.
China’s society is also delegating governance responsibilities from the government to the private sector, with insurers leading the way in this transformation. As for the existing scholarship, governance by insurance is not a novel research topic in developed democracies. Many scholars, such as Tom Baker, John Rappaport, and Timothy D Lytton, have already established a theoretical framework to evaluate and investigate regulation by liability insurance based on their developed insurance market conditions. Empirical research is also conducted in various fields. In contrast, the theoretical and empirical research on regulation by liability insurance in China’s context is insufficient. Few scholars have researched this field recently, but these studies have significant limitations.
This research investigates the theoretical considerations of regulation through liability insurance, establishing conceptual groundwork bridging theory and empirical research in this field. Building on prior research, this paper intends to advance a China-specific theoretical framework for regulation by liability insurance. The proposed framework will contribute to exploring the regulatory role of liability insurance in China and enrich broader theoretical discourse in this field.

This paper proposes and engages in an exploratory study of the real life impact of the “one-person, one-vote” rule in constitutional politics.
The “one-person, one-vote” rule originated in U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s, and has been imported into Japanese constitutional politics in the following decades. It is one of the rare fields in which the Japanese courts (including the Supreme Court) have taken an active stance in the application of judicial review, and has resulted in a tug-of-war between the judicial and legislative branches over the extent to which the electoral system has to be modified to abide by this rule. With each national election new lawsuits are filed, and electoral representation has been considerably altered as a result of such litigation and the rulings. Despite this, neither the real-life impact of this doctrine, nor the process of litigation (of who is bringing this litigation, how, and to what effect) has been studied in depth.
The paper will first review the origin and application of this rule in the U.S. and Japan. Then it will discuss how this has resulted in a series of electoral reforms in Japan, especially in the reallocation of seats from rural to urban areas. The author then proposes a framework for studying the real-life impact of such changes in electoral representation. In particular, within the context of accelerating demographic shifts, the author will examine the impact of changes in electoral representation to the most rural parts and the most urban parts of the country. Ultimately the author is concerned with whether a mode of representation solely based on the size of the population truly represents the voices of people across Japan. This impact study will form a basis for such a critical inquiry.

Indonesia’s anti-terrorism law, Law No. 5 of 2018, was enacted in response to a series of suicide bombings and armed attacks and carries significant implications for the country’s legal system and approach to national security. One of the most critical changes introduced by this law was the inclusion of a ‘motive element’ in the definition of terrorism, specifically an ideological, political, or security disturbance motive. Through a comparative analysis of three jurisdictions that have led the trend towards defining terrorist acts by reference to motivation – the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia – this paper examines the consequences and ongoing controversy of terrorist act motive requirements to reveal key arguments for and against such inclusion. This analysis reveals that the advantages of including a motive element – generally, and particularly in the Indonesian context – are minimal. Conversely, potential problems include legal uncertainty, inconsistencies with international law, and infringements of human rights. More fundamentally, the inclusion of a motive element heightens the risk of terrorist offences being misapplied to prosecute peaceful political protests and politically motivated actions, such as movements for self-determination, amidst Indonesia’s political diversity. On this basis, this paper recommends repealing the motive element from Law No. 5 of 2018.

This study examines perceptions of China’s People’s Congress system through 2021 fieldwork (38 citizen and 3 delegate interviews), revealing a paradox in legal consciousness. While citizens broadly affirm the system’s institutional legitimacy, they demonstrate minimal interest in or knowledge of electoral procedures. This disjuncture reflects a contradictory configuration where legal recognition coexists with procedural disengagement.

Theoretically framed by Unger’s dialectic of legal universality/particularity, the analysis identifies a culturally specific formal equality detached from liberal proceduralism. Here, equality manifests not as active legal agency or procedural awareness but as symbolic recognition of fairness within hierarchical moral orders. Legal consciousness is thus shaped by embedded ethical expectations and state developmentalist discourse, internalized through belief systems. Notions of justice and legitimacy emerge from culturally mediated understandings of moral authority, not direct electoral engagement.

Based on interviews and participant observation, the study identifies five ideal-typical modes of legal consciousness—alienated, skeptical, hesitant, pragmatic, and active—and analyzes their formation in relation to institutional practices, cultural traditions, and everyday experiences. The paper argues that the legitimacy of the People’s Congress system is not derived from procedural mimicry of Western parliamentary models, but from its embeddedness in local networks of trust, ritualized participation, and a distinctive “institutional nexus” that mediates between the state and society. The study contributes to global legal pluralism by offering a decolonized reading of China’s representative institutions.

I will be presenting the main theme of my chapter in the book as well as offer my reflections, updates, and insights drawn from my ongoing research related to the book's central themes

Extremism poses a serious challenge to Indonesia’s diversity and national stability, including within higher education institutions. This study aims to evaluate the legal framework governing the prevention of extremism in universities and examine its implementation at Brawijaya University as a case study Based on data from the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), Universitas Brawijaya is one of the universities with the highest number of students exposed to radical terrorism ideologies or affiliated with radical terrorist groups. Using a socio-legal research method with a digital ethnography approach, the study draws on both primary and secondary data sources. Findings indicate that although several laws and regulations—such as the National Education System Law, the Higher Education Law, and the Presidential Regulation on the National Action Plan for Preventing Violent Extremism—have been established, they remain general and lack specific provisions addressing extremism prevention in higher education. Brawijaya University demonstrates a strong commitment through the issuance of rector regulations, integration of Pancasila values into the curriculum, implementation of nationalism-based student orientation (PKKMB), and partnerships with external bodies such as the Densus 88 counterterrorism unit. However, the absence of a dedicated institutional body to address extremism prevention represents a significant gap that hinders effective implementation. Therefore, the establishment of a specialized unit within each university is urgently needed to strengthen preventive efforts and ensure a safer academic environment.

“Public order and good morals” remain an important principle in the regulation of broadcasting content in Taiwan. However, the concept of “public order and good morals” is dynamic and subject to the evolution of social thoughts and generations. Drawing on the empirical legal research approach, this study examines the consistency of administrative law decisions in violation of “public order and good morals” from 1998 to 2024. The findings reveal that the breach of the broadcast act shifted from terrestrial to satellite broadcasting due to legal and regulatory changes following technological advancements. The results also show that broadcasters are more likely to challenge the decision made by the National Communications Commission (NCC), which is responsible for regulating telecommunications and broadcasting services in Taiwan. Based on the analysis of the law decision, the successful rate of broadcasters overturning the NCC decisions has surged from 8.1% (1998-2020) to 40.9% (2021-2024). The increasing rate of overturned decisions raises concerns about the rigor of the NCC’s regulation on sexuality, violence, and unverified facts, which are highly subjective and vary across perspectives. This study suggests that enhancing legal clarity and administrative precision is important to safeguarding broadcasting freedom and fostering the development of the media industry.

This research investigates the procedural barriers that informal workers encounter when seeking access to civil justice in Thailand and Indonesia. In both countries, informal workers constitute a significant portion of the workforce and contribute substantially to national economies. Despite constitutional and statutory guarantees of equality before the law, informal workers often face systemic challenges that hinder their ability to assert rights or resolve disputes through civil courts.

The study adopts a comparative doctrinal and policy analysis, drawing on legal texts, court rules, and reform initiatives in both jurisdictions. Particular attention is paid to Thailand, where procedural barriers persist despite legal provisions aimed at promoting access to justice. Court fees remain a significant obstacle for informal workers, as the process of applying for fee waivers is complex, requires documentation that many cannot provide, and is often subject to inconsistent judicial discretion. Small claims procedures, designed to provide a simplified path to resolve low-value disputes, are underutilized, partly due to limited public awareness and a lack of institutional support. Furthermore, state-funded legal aid in civil matters is limited in scope and availability, leaving many informal workers without effective representation. By contrast, the study examines Indonesia’s legal aid law and the establishment of mandatory legal aid posts as an alternative model offering useful lessons for Thailand, while also identifying gaps in Indonesia’s practical implementation.

The findings reveal that informal workers in Thailand and Indonesia continue to face difficulties due to procedural complexities, low legal literacy, and inadequate access to legal assistance—factors that exacerbate inequality. The paper argues that procedural reforms must be more responsive to the socio-economic conditions of informal workers in both contexts. Recommendations include simplifying fee waiver processes, expanding and publicizing small claims mechanisms, increasing legal aid availability, and promoting community-based legal education.

This paper will examine the conflicts among interested parties (IPs) in the establishment of renewable energy (RE) facilities, citing some cases in Japan where we find veto/veto-like practices or less/no public participation (PP).
First, this paper will identify procedural environmental rights that we share in the global arena. The environmental rule of law, which appears in part in the Rio Principle 10, the Aarhus Convention and the Escazú Agreement, prescribes three pillars for the protection of environmental procedural rights: the right to information, the right to PP in the administrative process and the right to access to justice. Each government is therefore obliged to provide these opportunities to IPs.
Second, the paper will demonstrate that RE installations cause conflicts between IPs. Each Paris Agreement country is promoting the siting of RE facilities, reflecting its updated energy policy in pursuit of the Nationally Determined Contribution. However, in some cases, the neighbourhood of a large solar panel installation or a series of wind power plants criticises the environmental damage/degradation caused by these newly installed facilities and the lack of satisfactory PP opportunities or difficulties in participation. Traditionally, this type of conflict has been discussed concerning the procedural (and substantive) aspects of siting unpopular public facilities, such as waste disposal sites, under the rubric of “environmental justice”.
Finally, the question will be raised of how we resolve conflicts between IPs. In theory, local neighbourhoods have no veto power without legitimate reasons, while we have participation mechanisms such as environmental impact assessment laws and regulations. However, if this is not properly implemented due to a shortage of resources or less respect for the values of the PP, we need to seriously consider how to deal with these conflicting issues through administrative and judicial remedies in achieving environmental justice.

Drawing on insights from sociology and new institutional economics, Extralegal Governance provides the first comprehensive account of China's illegal markets by applying a socio-economic approach. It considers social legitimacy and state repression in examining the nature of illegal markets. It examines how power dynamics and varying levels of punishment shape exchange relationships between buyers and sellers. It identifies context-specific risks and explains how private individuals and organizations address these risks by developing extralegal governance institutions to facilitate social cooperation across various illegal markets. Adopting a multiple-case study design to sample China's illegal markets, this book utilizes four cases - street vending, small-property-rights housing, corrupt exchanges, and online loan sharks - to examine how market participants foster cooperation and social order in illegal markets.

Access to justice in any jurisdiction requires different contributions from many legal actors. Some jurisdictions have implemented compulsory requirements for lawyers, and Asia provides prime examples: Japan and South Korea have functioning systems of mandatory public interest activities, and lawyers in China are required to participate in paid legal aid services. (Whalen-Bridge 2022). Even in the U.S., where nation-wide mandatory pro bono was rejected, some courts impose systems of mandatory legal services (regarding New Jersey Courts, see https://www.probonopartner.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Madden-Exemption-Explained-2018.pdf), and there is the phenomenon of voluntary mandatory pro bono, voluntary bar associations that impose mandatory requirements on members to provide legal services to poor and underrepresented parties. This paper argues that analysis of the wide array of compulsory lawyer mechanisms in access to justice beyond mandatory pro bono is required, and suggests a framework for identification and comparison.

Framing corruption as a relational crime, this paper uses social network analysis to reconstruct public procurement corruption networks in Indonesia and to explore how their structure can inform network-based enforcement. A purposive sample of Supreme Court final judgments on procurement offences is coded to extract legally established relations among defendants, public officials, firms, and intermediaries, including bribe payments, bid rigging agreements, and collusive meetings. These events are modelled as one mode actor networks and a bipartite buyer supplier graph. Using Gephi, we compute degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centrality, together with density and Freeman centralization, to locate positional power and structural vulnerabilities.
The analysis shows that central figures in procurement corruption are often not formal decision makers, but brokerage actors, typically consultants or service providers, who bridge structural holes between bureaucratic and private clusters. The networks exhibit relatively high density and moderate centralization, indicating cohesive trust based structures that combine efficient coordination with resilience against law enforcement disruption. Simulated removal of popular actors with many direct ties produces limited structural change, whereas removing high betweenness brokers fragments the network and sharply reduces overall connectivity.
Methodologically, the study develops a replicable forensic workflow that converts narrative court records into analyzable graphs and operational indicators for investigative prioritization, such as high betweenness brokers, cut points, and structurally equivalent firms. Substantively, it shows how corruption in public procurement is embedded in durable, trust based social relations and argues for a shift from individual centric enforcement to network aware strategies, including risk-based audit targeting and early warning mechanisms that aim to disrupt the relational infrastructure of corrupt procurement ecosystems.

In 2001, Japan’s Justice System Reform Council sought to transform the country's elitist, inaccessible legal professions, by enhancing their ‘diversity, fairness and openness’ in order to satisfy the rapidly evolving needs of a modern society and maintain public trust. Twenty-five years on, how has this expansive vision of diversity and inclusion (D&I) influenced Japan’s judiciary?

We know two things. Firstly, scholarly and Japan Federation of Bar Associations discourse on judicial diversity in Japan soon diverged from the global conversation on gains in legitimacy and credibility for judiciaries that reflect the populations they serve. It skewed narrowly towards judges’ regional, educational and professional backgrounds. Meanwhile, there was silence on attributes like gender, disability, age, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Secondly, we know from Supreme Court of Japan data that there has been a clear if incremental trend towards recruiting women to the judiciary. Women occupied 29% of judicial positions as at April 2024, although mostly in junior roles. This is up from 16.5% in 2005, the year when these data were first released.

But we have not known how Japan’s judges have experienced and how its prospective judges perceive this incipient shift towards gender balance, and potential flux in other attributes.

This presentation reports on a 6-month pilot study by Australian and Japanese researchers, completed in April 2025, involving semi-structured interviews with 14 participants: eight former judges of various ages, genders, backgrounds and ranks; and six JD student Bar Exam passers. The study achieved two goals. It elicited rare insights on the invisible yet mutually reinforcing structural, institutional and cultural barriers to D&I in Japan’s traditionally monolithic judicial workforce, while also revealing the need for further research at scale to identify measures to surmount them.

This paper addresses the pervasive "crisis" and ongoing "reform" discussions surrounding legal education in India, underscored by the Bar Council of India's (BCI) three-year moratorium on new law school approvals. While the BCI, as the statutory body regulating legal education, has overseen a significant increase in law schools—particularly in the 2010s—this proliferation, though improving access, has often come at the cost of quality.

To delve into this complex issue, this paper presents an ethnographic study of 15 law schools in Haryana, a northern state in India. The research includes interviews with students, faculty, and administrative staff, alongside primary and secondary source analysis, to understand law school culture, classroom engagement, and the student journey from admission to graduation. The data has evaluated key parameters of quality, including teaching patterns, student engagement, and the availability of essential resources like moot courts and job placements.

The findings reveal a distinct trend: the rapid increase in the number of law schools across the country has indeed broadened access to legal education, but concurrently, it has exposed numerous unfulfilled gaps in quality. By zooming into a specific set of institutions that emerged during this period of expansion, the study traces their current functioning and effectiveness. The paper details the history and statutory powers of the BCI and trends in law school establishment. It then elaborates on the case study methodology, presenting collected data on enrollment, evaluation methods, attendance, law school culture, and graduate outcomes. The subsequent part analyses these data trends, supplementing them with anecdotal insights from the field. Concluding, the paper offers a nuanced perspective on the current state of legal education in India, contributing to the broader discourse on its "crisis" and potential pathways for "reform."

Despite the series of internal and external efforts toward judicial reform in Indonesia since the end of the authoritarian regime, concerns remain regarding the quality, efficiency, and institutional credibility of its courts. This paper examines the root cause of these persistent challenges by focusing on the appointment and promotion of judges from the colonial era to the present.

For the colonial period, the study utilizes the Regerings-Almanak Nederlandsch-Indië (East Indies Government Almanac), a publication of the Dutch colonial administration that listed the names and positions of judges and administrators, and relevant regulations issued by the colonial government. By systematically comparing annual editions of the Almanac, the research constructs longitudinal data to trace individual career trajectories and institutional patterns within the judiciary.

For the post-independence period, the analysis draws on data from the periodicals of the Indonesian Judges Association (Ikatan Hakim Indonesia, IKAHI) and relevant regulations issued by the Ministry of Justice. These sources provide insight into the institutional logic and bureaucratic constraints influencing judicial appointments and career paths of ordinary judges in contemporary Indonesia.

By integrating historical and contemporary data, this paper identifies long-standing structural factors that have hindered the judiciary’s ability to consolidate its authority and legitimacy within the Indonesian state, especially at the district level. It concludes by outlining key challenges and potential directions for meaningful judicial reform.

Centers for Japanese Law (CJLs) have been established by Nagoya University and its partner universities in Asia, where undergraduate students from the partner universities have been educated as part of the International Cooperation for Legal Development. Students first learn the Japanese language, and after reaching an intermediate level, they learn Japanese law. CJLs have employed Content-Based Instruction and Inquiry-Based Learning. The graduates have recently taken on active roles in the legal field. The aim of this research is to clarify what graduates who have become paralegals and aspire to become lawyers in Vietnam and Cambodia have obtained in Japanese legal education and which context and methodology are most effective for the study of Japanese law. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for approximately one hour each with nine young paralegals who have been working for Japanese law firms in Vietnam and Cambodia. The three findings were identified from the analysis of the interview data. One of the valuable acquisitions for participants is knowledge of Japanese culture, including business etiquette and the general values of the Japanese people, gained through the Japanese language class. Secondly, the essential skills which participants obtained are academic skills and autonomous learning. Thirdly, participants are able to submit reports and to explain their recommendations and reasons to their superiors because they are familiar with syllogisms and understand the differences between Japanese law and the laws of their countries. Considering the findings, paralegals and future lawyers need to acquire academic theory, develop logical thinking skills, and demonstrate competence in working with Japanese individuals. CJLs should consider not only the cramming of knowledge and input from students but also encourage autonomous thinking in the Japanese class and law class together.

Mutual legal assistance (MLA), a treaty mechanism by which one country requires evidence located in another, was built for paper records and now struggles with artificial-intelligence systems whose audit trails are short-lived, cloud-based, and dispersed across jurisdictions. This paper contends that a provenance-over-jurisdiction principle—under which courts admit digital material once its integrity and origin are cryptographically proved, irrespective of physical location—offers a fairer and more workable footing for Asia’s legally plural landscape.
The research design combines two complementary legal methods. First, a PRISMA-guided bibliometric study of English-language sources (2014–2025) maps the distance between scholarship on AI bias and scholarship on transnational evidence. VOSviewer network analysis confirms limited cross-citation, indicating that distributive-justice questions remain undertheorized at their intersection. Second, a close doctrinal comparison examines statutory and soft-law instruments governing digital evidence in Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea, read against the European Union’s risk-tiered AI Act and China’s algorithm-filing rules. Three recurrent pressure points emerge—dual-hash authentication thresholds, minimum log-retention periods, and the availability of rapid-preservation orders—each of which imposes disproportionate costs on parties with limited resources.
Relying on functional-equivalence doctrine and proportionality tests developed by Asian constitutional courts, the paper formulates model MLA clauses that embed the provenance principle while protecting privacy and fair-trial guarantees. The proposal shows how redirecting admissibility toward verifiable origin, rather than territorial seizure, can harmonize divergent regulatory schemes and broaden access to justice for communities harmed by AI-driven decisions across the region, and strengthen trust in cross-border investigative cooperation efforts.

Generative AI is increasingly used in the legal field, offering low-cost public legal consultations and improving access to justice. However, issues such as unauthorized practice, unclear responsibility, and the public’s difficulty in judging AI accuracy remain. This raises the need to understand how people evaluate AI-generated legal advice and what factors shape those evaluations.
This study empirically investigates how people perceive and evaluate AI-generated legal advice by presenting identical consultation content attributed either to an AI lawyer or to a human lawyer. Drawing on Construal Level Theory , the study aims to explore how individuals’ information processing and judgment patterns differ when evaluating legal advice concerning a case involving a close acquaintance compared to a stranger’s case. To this end, a vignette experiment will be conducted with members of the general public, manipulating two variables: the source of advice (AI vs. human) and psychological distance (close vs. distant). Participants will then evaluate the advice in terms of its perceived quality, reasonable price, and willingness to follow the recommendation.
First, in psychologically close situations, participants are expected to assign a lower price to advice labeled as AI-generated and show lower intentions to accept it compared to advice labeled as coming from a human lawyer. Second, in psychologically distant situations, no meaningful differences are expected in price judgments or acceptance intentions regardless of the source of advice. Third, in close situations, the negative evaluation of AI-labeled advice is expected to be explained by lower ratings of its contextualization and customization.
By revealing the psychological mechanisms underlying people’s evaluation of AI as a legal advisor, this study provides empirical evidence relevant to discussions on the adoption, regulation, and potential overreliance on AI-based legal advisory systems.

In response to the low evaluation of Japan’s judicial IT system from the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report for 2017, the IT-driven civil court procedure has begun to advance. In contrast, in Indonesia, which consist of many islands, there is an urgent need to ensure access to courts for parties due to geographical difficulties in attending court, and there is a strong demand for the digitization of court procedures to improve the efficiency and speed of litigation. The digitization of court procedures is being rapidly advanced to achieve “simple, fast, and low-cost” trials as stipulated in Article 2 of the Law No. 48 of 2009 concerning Judicial Power.
　In Indonesia, due to the difficulty of revising the civil procedure law itself, the digitization of court proceeding is being promoted by revising the Supreme Court Regulation (No.1/2019). In contrast, in Japan the IT of court proceedings is being promoted gradually and cautiously through legislative amendments by the Diet. As symbolized by the phrase “to effectively and efficiently achieve fair and prompt judicial proceedings” in the opening of the report published by the government-related study group, the perspective of ensuring the fairness (the judgement’s correctness) of judicial proceedings is not lacking in the IT-based reform of judicial proceedings. The IT process of civil court proceedings is categorized into three areas (3e). Phase 1 regarding “e-Court”, involves the implementation of web conference under the previous Code of Civil Procedure (“CCP”). Phase 2 under the amendment of the CCP (Act No. 48 of 2022) enacted on May 18, 2022 (“Amended CCP”), involves the operation of procedures such as oral arguments in open court etc., via web conference. Finally, in Phase 3, the operation of “e-filing” and “e-Case Management” will be commenced.

This paper presents the preliminary results of our internet-based RCT (randomized controlled trial) research. We investigate (1) whether layperson's fact-finding is rational in that it follows the Bayes Rule, (2) whether layperson's negligence-evaluation is reasonable in that it distinguishes the act and the outcome of a mistake, and (3) if and to what extent layperson's damages-assessment differs from that of a professional judge. We construct two vignettes; one about a wrongful prosecution of a public official who is accused of taking bribery based upon a real case; the other about a tort case where an infant suffered from anaphylaxis by the food provided by the nursery school based upon a real case. Our preliminary results are (1) layperson's fact-finding is modestly rational, (2) layperson's negligence-evaluation is reasonable, and (3) layperson's damages-assessment is far larger than that of a professional judge.

This paper presents the preliminary results of the third wave of a simulated, test-style survey. The aim is to evaluate the educational outcomes of Japanese law programs for non-native speakers. Building on the first two waves conducted in 2023 and 2024, the research indicates that general Japanese proficiency, legal knowledge, and logical reasoning are three distinct yet interconnected factors influencing students' success. This wave introduces a combined format in which participants first read a short excerpt from an actual statute. Then, they answer a set of timed multiple-choice questions. These questions assess participants' legal understanding, Japanese language proficiency, and logical reasoning based on the provided legal text.
The main participants in this study are international undergraduate and graduate students studying law in Japan through programs taught in Japanese. A comparison group of native Japanese-speaking undergraduate students is also included. This setup allows for a more accurate, context-sensitive assessment of how learners handle the syntactic, semantic, and conceptual challenges of legal Japanese.
While the full analysis is still in progress, this wave aims to clarify the relationships indicated by previous surveys. Specifically, the analysis indicates that general language skills alone do not predict legal performance, suggesting that understanding legal Japanese and logical reasoning are more critical. By improving assessment tools and comparing students with different language backgrounds, the study aims to contribute to the development of methods that enhance bilingual legal competence across languages and jurisdictions.

Myanmar’s legal framework on intellectual property remains deeply rooted in colonial legacies that prioritize individual ownership, economic value, and commodification. This framework fails to reflect the lived experiences and values of Indigenous communities, particularly the Karen people, whose cultural knowledge and expressions are fundamentally collective, spiritual, and community embedded. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork—including interviews with Karen leaders and cultural scholars—this paper explores how Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP) is disregarded by Myanmar’s Intellectual Property (IP) system and how the law can be reimagined to support inclusive and equitable cultural heritage protection. It critically evaluates the limitations of Myanmar’s 2019 IP laws and highlights alternative legal models—such as Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), sui generis systems, and legal pluralism—within a decolonial and Indigenous standpoint framework. By centering Indigenous voices, this study offers a pathway for reconfiguring legal institutions in Myanmar and across Asia toward pluralism and justice.

The Citizen Participation Trial System in South Korea allows laypeople to serve as jurors, interpreting evidence and rendering verdicts in criminal trials. However, jurors are vulnerable to the influence of their personal biases especially in child sex abuse cases where the child’s testimony often plays a crucial role but differs significantly from that of adults. In real-life Citizen Participation Trials, jurors’ preexisting beliefs or biases regarding child sex abuse victims might influence their verdicts. Thus, this study aimed to examine the effects of CSA victim’s age, level of sexual knowledge on mock jurors’ legal judgment making. This study used 2(Victim age: 6 vs. 12) X 2(Level of sexual knowledge: Low vs. High) between-subject design. An online survey was conducted and participants(N=250) were randomly assigned to one of 4 conditions, read vignette based on real CSA case, and rated the Credibility of victim and made verdict. The findings of this research are anticipated to provide empirical evidence for the necessity of judicial interventions.

Indonesia has a responsibility to foster an innovative and inclusive Digital Economy. The current wave of technological advancement and digitalization has significantly impacted the nation, leading to the rise of digital-based assets. This phenomenon has also been integrated into Indonesia's bankruptcy law, particularly in the regulation of intangible assets. This research aims to achieve two primary objectives. First, it aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how digital asset regulation can address the challenges posed by the digital economy. Second, it aims to analyze the status of digital assets within the context of bankruptcy assets under Indonesia's bankruptcy law. The study will examine legal norms and regulations, employing a legal approach and a literature review as its primary research method. A qualitative approach will gather data from various sources, including books, journal articles, reports, conference papers, and websites. Data will be collected using document study tools, and content analysis will be employed to assess secondary data through a consistent regulatory framework. The advancement of Indonesia's digital economy aims to enhance the existing literature on bankruptcy law in Indonesia, particularly with the policies governing digital assets as bankruptcy assets.

Victim protection in Indonesia's legal system faces structural challenges rooted in the historical formation of its national legal framework. The Indonesian criminal justice system was established in a political landscape dominated by authoritarianism, where Act No. 8 of 1981 on Criminal Procedure (KUHAP) emerged as a product of state-centric logic prioritizing stability and social order over the protection of individual rights. Under this paradigm, KUHAP reflects a police-oriented model that places state security above justice for victims, thereby marginalizing victims both procedurally and in terms of rights recognition.
This article analyzes the issue through the framing victim protection as a key element in restoring legal legitimacy in a post-authoritarian context. Using a socio-legal, the study investigates the extent to which the constitutions and national regulations of both countries affirm victims' rights and how national criminal law aligns with international human rights norms. The enactment of the 2023 Indonesian Penal Code (KUHP) marks a pivotal opportunity for a paradigm shift, particularly with incorporating restorative justice principles that reflect a state-level acknowledgment of the need to shift from punitive approaches to victim rehabilitation and social reintegration.
Accordingly, this article argues that the forthcoming reform of KUHAP must support and reinforce this restorative orientation as part of a broader repositioning of Indonesian criminal law towards a more humanistic and democratic framework. Drawing upon the theory of semi-authoritarian constitutionalism and critiques of repressive legalism, this article contends that criminal procedure reform should be understood as part of a larger project of post-authoritarian legal reconstruction. Within this framework, justice for victims is not merely a normative goal or political rhetoric, but a critical foundation for rebuilding public trust in law and democratic institutions.
Keywords: victim protection; Indonesia; criminal procedure; reform

The past decade has hosted concurrent movements in the fields of art, archaeology, anthropology, and international law for the return of cultural heritage. Such movements have achieved significant moments for Southeast Asia, with notable repatriation of artifacts to states such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar from Western museums. The presentation reflects on the preceding efforts through the perspective of epistemic justice. The presentation argues that epistemic justice calls for return of cultural heritage in ways that satisfy the expectations of the cultures of origin, and those expectations do not necessarily align with states. The presentation focuses on Southeast Asia, highlighting how the return of Indigenous cultural heritage to Southeast Asian states has been insufficient to meet the expectations of their respective Indigenous peoples.

Indonesia, as one of the countries in Asia, boasts a rich cultural diversity, which allows integration between different cultures. Integration between different cultures can happen through intertribal marriages, one of which is conducted by the Batak Toba Community from North Sumatera, Indonesia. The integration that occurs between two cultures allows for a compromise between these cultures, one of which ways is the “Buy Marga” mechanism, a step taken to maintain the Batak Toba tribe's bloodline and the continuation of the Batak Toba and their descendants. Therefore, this research aims to see whether the “Buy Marga” mechanism in intertribal marriages in the Batak Toba community has achieved good integration between tribes and has created substantive justice in the running of marital relations and the continuation of offspring in the Batak Toba community. By using a qualitative approach through field studies, interviews with the Batak Toba leaders and families of the perpetrators of intertribal marriages, as well as normative analysis of national law, this study aims to reveal the "Buy Marga" mechanism's effectiveness in creating unity to maintain identity and social cohesion in the indegenous community. This study contributes to the discourse of legal pluralism in Asia by showing that customary law can be an instrument of social inclusion, but also needs to be continuously evaluated in order to create equality and substantive justice in plural societies, especially the Batak Toba community.
Keywords: “Buy Marga”, legal pluralism, customary law, the Batak Toba tribe, intertribal marriage, Asian culture and diversity

Technological crimes have a financial objective and victims want compensation, so financial and communication trails are investigated to stop or seize assets and bringing it to the victims' aid may restore hope for the victims and increase the motivation of government officials to prosecute effectively in preventing and suppressing technology crimes. However, post-violation remedies are difficult and ineffective, both in terms of criminal prosecution and civil remedies for damages especially if analyzed from the perspective of the victim who may decide to drop the lawsuit because of many limitations. Victims presume less opportunity for redress for their damages, and it is unlikely that they will be able to get redress from transnational criminal organizations. Therefore, the establishment of measures to prevent and deter crimes, reduce damages, or track down assets and wrongdoings of transnational criminal organizations and provide compensation to victims might be more appropriate approach and creates an incentive for victims to enter the justice process until the end of the process, leading to effective prevention and suppression of technological crimes.

Among the various forms of exploitation experienced by trafficking victims, forced criminality ranks as the third most prevalent. Victims are coerced into a wide range of criminal activities, from petty theft to drug trafficking, online scams, and even murder. When the victims are recued or managed to escape the traffickers’ control, they often face prosecution by domestic judicial systems and are held responsible for the crimes they were compelled to commit. In addition to fines or imprisonment, criminal records impose lasting barriers to rehabilitation. This raises a fundamental question: are the human rights of trafficking victims truly respected when they are punished for acts committed under coercion?

The “non-criminalization principle,” as invoked in instruments like the Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking, seeks to address this issue. However, treaties and legislations do so in a general and aspirational manner, without providing a more specific guidance on its implementation, which may consequently undermine the practical effectiveness in protecting victims and upholding justice. This issue is especially pressing in parts of Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar and Thailand, where trafficking victims are often forced into cross-border criminal activities—including telecom scams or drug transport—and later prosecuted in countries where they sought protection.

This article explores this issue in three parts. This article analyzes the principle from a human rights perspective and examines three existing models—duress, causation, and presumption-based. It highlights the practical and doctrinal limitations of these models through comparative analysis of international and domestic frameworks. Finally, drawing on theories of determinism and free will, this article proposes the “Dual-Factor Model” as a new approach to address the shortcomings of current models and offer a more coherent and just framework that better aligns with international human rights standards.

This paper examines how the excessive use of force by investigators—particularly the police—during the investigation stage continues to erode the foundational principles of the Indonesian criminal justice system. Investigation, which is intended as a process for uncovering material truth, often becomes a coercive means to extract confessions from suspects through physical and psychological violence. Such practices violate the principle of due process of law, which guarantees fair, impartial treatment and the protection of human rights for all individuals subjected to legal proceedings. Numerous cases demonstrate that violence during investigations is not an anomaly but rather part of a recurring pattern. These include the torture of five murder suspects by the Jakarta Metropolitan Police, the post-demonstration abuse of Gideon in Yogyakarta, and the death of Aan Yulianto—a witness—following police interrogation at the Yogyakarta Regional Police Headquarters. This persistent phenomenon is closely linked to structural deficiencies such as a performance approach centered on target-oriented rather than problem-solving policing, weak internal and external oversight, and the absence of standardized competency assessments for investigators. This study employs a legal research approach by combining conceptual, statutory, comparative, and case study methods. It explores principles of justice, presumption of innocence, and human rights within criminal procedure, examines the statutory framework under the KUHAP, analyzes documented cases of abuse, and draws lessons from international practices, particularly in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Findings reveal that excessive use of force stems from a lack of accountability and professional standards among investigators. Two key complementary solutions are proposed: competency certification to ensure that investigators uphold ethical and human rights standards, and strengthened judicial scrutiny to enable more effective oversight of investigative conduct. The integration of these two mechanisms could prevent the investigators from behaving as tools for a machiavellian social control.

The increasing deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) in public and private decision-making processes has transformed the legal landscape, particularly in areas such as predictive policing, credit scoring, and automated judicial assistance. These algorithmic systems present significant challenges to traditional legal doctrines of responsibility and accountability. When a decision generated by AI results in harm, discrimination, or the violation of individual rights, identifying a legally responsible party becomes increasingly difficult. This raises a fundamental legal question: how can responsibility be meaningfully attributed in the age of machine-led decisions? This paper critically examines the concept of algorithmic responsibility, which refers to the allocation of legal and ethical accountability for actions or decisions made by AI systems. The study explores the limitations of existing legal frameworks in addressing harms caused by autonomous systems that lack intent, foreseeability, or control in the human sense. Drawing from comparative perspectives, particularly the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act and OECD AI Principles, the paper argues that there is an urgent need to reconceptualize legal responsibility in ways that reflect the distributed, data-driven, and often inscrutable nature of algorithmic operations. Beyond the legal analysis, the paper engages with normative and philosophical debates concerning the moral agency of algorithms, the erosion of human oversight, and the risk of dehumanized decision-making. It contends that while AI cannot be considered a legal person or moral agent, regulatory systems must ensure that human actors—developers, deployers, and public authorities—are held accountable through principles of transparency, explainability, and due process. Ultimately, this paper proposes a multi-level framework for algorithmic responsibility that combines legal liability, ethical oversight, and institutional governance. Such a framework is essential to safeguard the values of justice, fairness, and the rule of law in an era increasingly shaped by autonomous technologies.

This presentation explores the socio-legal mechanisms that enable individuals—particularly those who, due to accumulated psychological trauma, have engaged in oppositional or criminal behavior—to move beyond social exclusion and pursue reintegration.
These individuals, often labeled as “offenders,” experience a vicious cycle in which trauma leads to hostile behavior, which in turn causes further isolation, loss of social trust, and entrenched stigma.
When psychological trauma accumulates, individuals may lose the ability to reflect on their situation, directing their pain outward and thereby reinforcing their exclusion. This process often results in a deteriorating relationship with society and deepens stigma.
Focusing on the recovery process of such individuals, this presentation examines how they can overcome hostility and voluntarily seek reconciliation with society.
Drawing on Judith Herman’s trauma recovery model and Amartya Sen’s capability approach, this research employs case studies to investigate the effectiveness of various social interventions—particularly within the framework of restorative justice—in fostering trust, agency, and a sense of inclusion.
Ultimately, the study aims to identify mechanisms that enable these individuals to reconnect with society and break the cycle of exclusion, thereby preventing the reinforcement of stigma and contributing to a more inclusive form of justice.

Administratively, clarity regarding the registration of customary land rights for indigenous peoples in Indonesia was only achieved in 2024 with the enactment of Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency Regulation No. 14 of 2024, which pertains to the implementation of land administration and the registration of customary land rights for indigenous communities. While it has implemented more comprehensive regulations for registering customary land rights, this regulation is limited in that it only applies to customary land free from conflicts. Similarly, the Philippines faces a comparable challenge. According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGA), in 2023, the Philippines' National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) reached just 33% of its goal, issuing Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) or Certificates of Ancestral Land Title (CALT) for 1.531 ancestral domains and lands. This study seeks to critically examine how customary or communal land registration is conducted within customary law communities in Indonesia and the Philippines. It compares land ownership practices in both countries, emphasizing both formal administrative registration and substantive issues. This study employs a comparative and statutory approach, combined with qualitative methods within a critical legal studies framework. While the Philippines has demonstrated some progress over Indonesia—particularly in institutional development and data collection for land administration—the situation regarding overlaps between indigenous customary land and various permits for natural resource management remains similar in both nations. Furthermore, in Indonesia, the Minister of Agrarian Affairs' regulation does not explicitly recognize data from NGOs such as the Indigenous Territory Registration Agency (BRWA) and the Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), which have already established indigenous territories. Consequently, the overlap between customary land registration and conflicting industrial permits, such as mining and oil palm plantations, could hinder its effectiveness.

This panel aims to bridge the traditional socio-legal studies of the "living law" and the recent research of legal consciousness from 4 countries papers.
The concept of "living law," by Eugen Ehrlich, expressed the sense of justice among the ordinary people resisting the denial of their customary practice by state law. Relying on this concept, socio-legal surveys were conducted in various countries to defend customary rights, leading to landmark judicial decisions.
Living law's theory presupposed that such law existed prior to state law, was autonomous and robust, and that the law's community adhering to it was homogeneous. However, our empirical research reveals that in order for longstanding daily practices to be formulated as customary rights, they are often framed using legal categories derived from international human rights norms, state law, or regional legal frameworks. It becomes necessary, therefore, to understand living law as a form of translation of exogenous laws.
Moreover, the way in which such exogenous laws are translated and interpreted varies among local peoples and their supporters. Recent studies on legal consciousness, initiated by Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, emphasize the diversity in people’s understanding of law. They focus on how individuals justify and narrate their practices, thereby seeking to capture the plurality of legal consciousness. Relying on this perspective, this panel analyzes the processes through which exogenous law, customary rights, and daily practices are translated and interpreted.
Our topics include customary forests in Japan and Indonesia, farmland reallocation practices in China, and human rights advocacy in Myanmar.

The prestige of the concept of Guardians who can marry off girls without the permission of the child has begun to fade, how not Law No. 1 of 1974 concerning marriage Article 6 paragraph (1): marriage is based on the consent of the bride and groom, in the Compilation of Islamic Law Inpers No. 1 of 1991 article 16 Paragraph (1): marriage is based on the consent of the prospective bride, and (2) the form of consent of the bride, can be in the form of a firm and real statement in writing, oral and gestures but can also be silent in the language of meaning as long as there is no explicit refusal, Law no 7 of 1984 ratification of the convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women article 16: prohibition of children and prohibition of forced marriage, as well as Law no 12 of 2022 concerning criminal acts of Sexual Violence article 10 forced marriage as a form of sexual violence. Looking at the data above, Ijbar guardians are very irrelevant, This paper will look at this phenomenon with a sociolegal perspective. There are two important questions: first, how is the Context of Mutilation of Ijbar Guardians in the Legal Rules of Marriage in Indonesia (actors, networks, and strategies)? With normative sociological research methods to read the study of the Context of Mutilation of Wali Ijbar in the Legal Rules of Marriage in Indonesia (actors, networks and strategies) and secondly Mutilation of Wali Ijbar in the Legal Rules of Marriage in Indonesia from a sociolegal perspective, the results of this study are to provide an overview related to the study of Mutilation of Wali Ijbar in the Legal Rules of Marriage in Indonesia from a sociolegal perspective and see actors, networks and strategies.

Policy discrimination remains pervasive in Asia’s diverse societies. Existing evaluation tools—such as Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) and Gender Impact Assessments (GIA)—are typically static, one-off procedures that fail to detect or correct structural discrimination embedded in facially neutral policy designs. To fill this institutional gap, this paper proposes the Anti-Discrimination Policy Sandbox, a novel preemptive governance mechanism that integrates difference-sensitive justice theory, democratic experimentalism, and regulatory sandbox practices developed in fintech and AI oversight.

The sandbox allows policymakers to conduct controlled policy simulations, test synthetic datasets, and incorporate staged feedback from affected communities before formal implementation. Guided by a zero-real-harm principle, it enables the proactive identification and correction of discriminatory effects at the rule-making stage. The study systematically reviews global HRIA/GIA mechanisms and compares them with experimental sandbox regimes. Drawing from practices such as Taiwan’s gender budgeting and Korea’s GIA law, the paper formulates an institutional model that includes entry/exit protocols, multi-stakeholder engagement, transparent reporting, and policy response obligations.

Findings suggest that the sandbox addresses the static limitations of traditional assessments by facilitating evidence-based, real-time policy correction. Yet, institutionalizing the mechanism in Asia faces challenges, including high simulation costs, vague standards, low public participation, and administrative opacity. The paper outlines key enabling conditions: data infrastructure, legal mandates, and cross-agency coordination.

By embedding difference-sensitivity and iterative feedback into the policy design process, the Anti-Discrimination Policy Sandbox offers a flexible and transferable institutional solution for advancing equality governance in pluralistic societies. It contributes both a theoretical innovation and a practical model for inclusive policymaking in Asia and beyond.

With plummeting birth rates across the continent, many Asian countries are (re-)considering legal and policy frameworks around Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART), such as In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). Changes are aimed at both increased access to ART and its increased provision, such as via a greater number of licensed IVF clinics. As ART becomes more common, new challenges might arise, such as how frozen embryos should be treated in case of separation or divorce. This question interlinks with the potential for finding property rights in embryos, and prevalent limitations across Asia that state ART/IVF is only available to married couples.

This presentation takes a recent Australian decision on the fate of frozen embryos following divorce and considers how its findings might play out in a jurisdiction like Hong Kong (which will be used as a case study). Delivered by one of the family court’s most well-regarded judges (justice Grant Riethmuller AM), the decision in Leena & Leena (2024) identified that frozen embryos are indeed property, and - consequently - subject to matrimonial property division in case of divorce. Whilst this, in principle, opened the way for one party to obtain the embryos for use (which is unlikely to be ordered anywhere in the world, even if there are no marriage requirements in ART laws), the case may be especially important for the way destroyed embryos are treated, including in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong.

Female labour force participation in Indonesia remains substantially lower than that of men, a disparity often attributed to socio-cultural norms and educational attainment. However, an underexamined structural barrier is the absence of affordable and accessible childcare facilities, a longstanding issue due to the lack of a comprehensive childcare policy in Indonesia.

In 2024, the Indonesian government enacted Undang-Undang Kesejahteraan Ibu dan Anak Pada Fase Seribu Hari Pertama Kehidupan (UU KIA), in which one of its provisions formally recognises women workers’ right to childcare. However, there has been no technical regulation which ensures the implementation of the rules. As a result, women who choose to work are still compelled to bear the high cost of childcare services. This “pay to work” dynamic penalises working women, constraining their labour market participation and reinforcing gendered economic inequality.

Drawing on comprehensive reviews of policy related to carework and childcare in Indonesia, this study argues that, without clear regulations and policies on childcare subsidies, the prohibitive cost of care will continue to exclude women from employment. To realise the promise of UU KIA and narrow the gender gap in labour force participation, the Indonesian government must urgently develop technical guidelines that mandate affordable childcare provision.

Japanese sociology of law began with research on the rights of common, achieving success in having courts recognize these rights as customary rights. However, in recent years, with the advancement of compliance-oriented legalization, forestlands with improper registration where rights of common are recognized have become problematic as “lands with unknown owners,” prompting the enactment of laws to regularize these situations.
This paper first explains the differences between previous legalization studies and the current societal trend emphasizing compliance. Then, based on interviews and questionnaire surveys with forestry cooperative staff, it depicts how compliance-oriented legalization is actually progressing.
When forestry cooperatives, which receive logging commissions from communities, emphasize compliance and verify forestland ownership based on official registration, obtaining consent from all numerous owners becomes necessary, causing high transaction costs and triggering a tragedy of the anti-commons. Therefore, in practice, a simplified procedure relying on customary rights and securing consent from community leaders is employed. However, this is not a legal consciousness based on an understanding of the customary rights of common but rather a calculated rationality that simplifying procedures is unlikely to cause problems.
By illustrating how the customary rights of common are actually perceived and used, this paper attempts to bridge traditional socio-legal studies on customary rights and new research on legal consciousness.

In Sri Lanka, the failure of the proposed Gender Equality Bill (2024) has exposed the limitations of formal legal reform in achieving gender justice, particularly within a context shaped by religious pluralism, political resistance, and institutional apathy. In this vacuum, the private sector has emerged as a critical actor in addressing gender equality through internal governance practices and organisational change. This paper examines how corporate governance structures, driven by internal policy shifts, stakeholder expectations, international donor engagement and global sustainability frameworks, have introduced gender equality measures beyond legal requirements. These include gender-sensitive recruitment strategies, workplace diversity and inclusion policies, anti-harassment procedures, and leadership development programs for women. Drawing on case studies and corporate disclosures, this paper explores how these practices are introduced, implemented, sustained, and contribute to gender equality outcomes. It argues that while these initiatives cannot replace enforceable legal protections, they have created a new, flexible framework for embedding gender equity in workplaces, particularly in contexts where state-led reforms are delayed or contested. However, the paper also cautions against over-reliance on voluntary efforts, highlighting the risk of symbolic compliance. This paper argues that a coordinated approach that links corporate governance mechanisms with legislative frameworks, where corporate actors can help bridge the persistent gaps left by formal legal systems, would contribute to a more inclusive and equitable future for women and marginalised communities in Sri Lanka.

Abstract：In traditional perceptions, women in Chinese traditional society were often regarded as a vulnerable group in legal cases and judicial practices, portrayed as weak, submissive, and dependent. However, upon examining female judicial cases in the Peking Gazette section of The North-China Herald in the late Qing Dynasty, the author find that from a Western perspective, Chinese women were not entirely disadvantaged. They often leveraged their status to actively engage in judicial activities, advocating for their own or relatives' rights. The records also include many instances of female criminality. By analyzing these cases, the author aim to challenge existing academic views and present a more comprehensive picture of the diversity and complexity of female images in late Qing judicial practices.

In Indonesia, approximately in the last ten years, a movement acknowledging customary forests and recognising indigenous peoples' right to territory has emerged. This movement was organised after constitutional court decision No. 35/2012, which gave the chance for indigenous people to get their own rights, particularly in their own territories. Currently, on 30th December 2016, peoples of nine customary forests have acquired state acknowledgement of their land rights by the Indonesian president. This momentum marks Indonesia’s first ever recognition of the rights of people who call their forests home. However, for such recognition of forest rights, the national law requires that the regional government first needs to recognize the communities as customary people with the regional product of law to adopt their adat (customary) law system intact. This processes intense inefficiency in order legal procedures and budget to publish the customary law as the formalization to state law. Approximately 461 the regional product of law spread in Indonesia provinces and regencies. In formal regulation, there are eleven (11) ways to gain access to natural resources that are derived from regional legal products recognizing indigenous communities, 10 of which require the existence of regional legal products to access the natural resource objects. This presentation analyzes the product of law in regional level about the indigenous people as discourse, rationales, and legal consciousness for indigenous people’s struggle in the customary forest movement, in order to answer the question why and how the adat people struggle with this formalization, why they mobilize the struggle to achieve the desired recognition as indigenous people/adat community into the Indonesian legal system.

Third-party funding (TPF), a mechanism where a third-party funder invests in the outcome of a claim, has emerged as a transformative force in global dispute resolution markets. While scholarly attention has primarily focused on regulatory frameworks in well-established jurisdictions, the market behavior of funders operating in legal vacuums remains underexplored.

This article addresses that gap through an empirical analysis of China’s nascent and under-regulated TPF market. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, it examines the challenges faced by funders and the adaptive strategies they employ in navigating regulatory uncertainty. By uncovering these dynamics, the article contributes to broader theoretical implications. It reconceptualizes funders, as market actors, as policy entrepreneurs who actively shape soft regulatory environments; highlights the complementarity—rather than substitutability—between trust and formal regulation in sustaining contractual performance; and underscores the institutional advantages of arbitration, particularly the party-appointment mechanism, in supporting emerging markets. Beyond this, China’s experience provides a practical foundation for policymakers in similarly underregulated jurisdictions seeking to harness the benefits of TPF while mitigating its risks.

This article examines inmate hierarchies in a large-scale women’s prison in China, both the formal hierarchy imposed by prison officers and the informal status hierarchy that emerges spontaneously among inmates. It investigates the legitimacy of the formal hierarchy and the interactions between formal and informal hierarchies, arguing that the formal hierarchy retains legitimacy when it aligns with the informal but loses legitimacy when the two systems conflict. Tension between the two systems lead to a loss of inmate confidence in the formal hierarchy and creates a feeling of unfairness and frustration within inmate society. An illegitimate formal hierarchy fosters feelings of unfairness among inmates and erodes their confidence in prison authority. Drawing on empirical data from field observations and 75 semi-structured interviews (41 inmates and 34 frontline prison officers), this research advances the study of social organization in women’s prisons in a non-Western context.
Keywords: social hierarchy, inmate code, legitimacy, women’s prison, China

In rural China, farmland is not privately owned but collectively owned by villages and contracted to individual households. Since the early 2000s, the Chinese state has strengthened legal protections for farmers’ land rights. The 2002 Rural Land Contract Law (RLCL) was a key milestone, guaranteeing that land contracts would remain stable for 30 years and prohibiting local authorities from adjusting land allocations without strong legal justification.
However, a traditional practice known as farmland reallocation still persists in many villages. In this system, village authorities periodically redistribute farmland based on household size—taking land from families with fewer members and giving it to those with more. This practice, rooted in the collective era before land reform, is officially illegal under the RLCL. Yet it continues to take place in ways that often appear legally ambiguous.
This paper investigates why such a clearly restricted practice continues. Prior research suggests that village elites—such as local cadres—sometimes use vague or exceptional legal clauses to justify the reallocation of land. But legal maneuvering alone is not enough; the practice also relies on the support or at least acquiescence of ordinary farmers. This raises an important question: does the persistence of farmland reallocation reflect a lack of awareness or understanding of legal rights among villagers?
Using original survey data from a rural township, the paper tests the hypothesis that weak legal knowledge among farmers contributes to the continuation of this practice. Although the hypothesis was not confirmed directly, the results reveal a deeper problem: for many villagers, state law is not part of their daily frame of reference. Legal rights feel distant, abstract, and disconnected from the realities of rural governance. As a result, village norms and collective decisions continue to shape land use more strongly than formal law.

This paper examines how corporate law in South Korea can evolve to better reflect principles of diversity and equity amid growing social expectations for inclusive and responsible business practices. South Korea’s corporate landscape, long dominated by chaebols (family-controlled conglomerates), faces increasing pressure to reform governance structures, enhance transparency, and address stakeholder interests beyond shareholders.
The study explores the legal and institutional barriers that hinder broader participation in corporate decision-making, especially by minority shareholders, women in leadership, and labor representatives. It analyzes recent developments, including revisions to the Commercial Act, ESG disclosure requirements, and gender diversity mandates on corporate boards.
Drawing on comparative insights from other Asian jurisdictions and international best practices, the paper argues for a redefinition of fiduciary duty to include social and environmental accountability. It proposes legal mechanisms to promote stakeholder-oriented governance, equitable access to corporate power, and long-term sustainability.
By aligning corporate law with evolving societal values, Korea can move toward a more equitable economic model. This paper contributes to regional discourse on how legal systems can support not only economic efficiency, but also justice in the corporate sphere.

The global rise in female incarceration has been disproportionately driven by drug offences, exposing the gendered effects of drug policies. Scholars argue the “war on drugs” has become a “war on women,” eroding leniency extended to female offenders. China offers a critical test case, where drug enforcement is tied to national security and harsh sentencing is politically mandated—raising questions about whether the classic finding of gender-based sentencing leniency persists in this high-pressure context.

Critically, gender effects on drug sentencing in China cannot be fully understood at the national level due to significant local variation. While institutional efforts aim to standardize sentencing through uniform rules, organizational arrangements, and political imperatives, these efforts intersect with persistent cultural norms—especially Confucian gender norms—that may still shape judicial perceptions of defendants. This tension between institutional pressures and local cultural norms suggests that the role of gender in drug sentencing is likely to vary across regions.

To investigate this interplay between national policy, local context, and gendered sentencing outcomes, this study conducts a comparative analysis of two provinces: Yunnan, a border province under intense anti-drug pressure where the political imperative is dominant, and Shandong, the birthplace of Confucianism with entrenched gender norms. Using criminal judgments from China Judgments Online and quantitative analysis, the study examines gender’s influence on drug sentencing, exploring regional variation under these distinct judicial logics.

This study aims to offer empirical evidence on how distinct judicial and socio-cultural contexts shape gendered justice under China’s punitive drug regime. By contrasting Yunnan and Shandong, it moves beyond a uniform view of drug sentencing, highlighting the interplay between national policy and local norms. The findings contribute to broader discussions on sentencing disparity, judicial discretion, and the gendered consequences of global “war on drugs” in non-Western contexts.

In rural China, women who marry into another village often lose their original identity rights in the collective economic organization and corresponding land rights, despite not legally transferring their “household registration”(“hukou”). In land rights disputes, the identity choices, group affiliations, and legal strategies of married-out women and female villagers form a noteworthy contrast. Relational legal consciousness, which is built upon relationships, provides a targeted analytical approach to this phenomenon. How do they choose the prioritized identity and group when facing the conflict? How do they perceive and decide to use state law or customary law to address the issue based on the identity recognition?  By tracing the answers to these two questions, this paper aims to establish a dynamic identity prioritization mechanism to analyze how married-out women dynamically adjust the prioritization of their multiple identities in response to changing contexts and choose specific legal strategies within a framework of legal pluralism.

Abstract:
This paper explores the ambivalence of economic empowerment for wives within households facing economic neglect by their husbands. Drawing from early observations of two women working in the informal sector, the study reveals that access to income—often celebrated as a means of liberation—can paradoxically become a binding force that sustains marital continuity despite neglect. Both women, though abandoned financially, remain in their marriages. Their responses, however, diverge: one responds with nurturing loyalty, the other with emotional detachment and superiority. This divergence raises critical questions about what truly sustains marriage under conditions of asymmetrical contribution and care. Using a socio-legal lens rooted in family law and gender theory, this study examines how normative expectations of family resilience, religious morality, and structural gender roles operate to normalize endurance over justice. It suggests that economic empowerment, in the absence of relational equity, may reproduce inequality in subtler forms. This paper contributes to current discussions on justice and gender in Asia by revealing how informal labor and traditional family structures intersect in maintaining fragile households under the illusion of stability.

Keywords:
Family resilience, gender justice, economic neglect, women’s agency, informal sector, legal norms

This paper analyzes Myanmar people’s legal consciousness from the 1988 democratization movement to the end of 2023, focusing on the evolution of their understanding and interpretation of the term “human rights” or “lu akwin aye.” The central discussion utilizes the theoretical framework of rights consciousness research in the sociology of law to clarify the specifics of how the Myanmar people understood the concept of human rights during the military rule from 1988 to 2011 and during the subsequent decade of so-called democratization.
From 1988 to 2011, Myanmar experienced a military dictatorship and was harshly criticized by the international community for human rights abuses against its people. After the transition to civilian rule in 2011, Myanmar’s political transition was hailed as democratization, and attracted international businesses. In the light of such so-called democratization and economic liberalization, the longstanding human rights abuses afflicting the people of Myanmar were discussed less and seemed to recede into the background.
This paper clarifies the legal consciousness of the Myanmar people, who have experienced major political and social changes during the past three decades, from the perspective of the vernacular translation of the human rights concept. Specifically, the following three points are discussed. First, it depicts how Myanmar people have understood and practiced the foreign concept of "human rights" by translating it according to the local context of Myanmar society, culture, and customs. Second, the paper focuses on the "translators" who played the pivotal roles in translating human rights and clarify the shift of translators and their roles according to political and social changes in each period. Third, it is highlighted that social and human rights activists, who once were former political prisoners, have been playing the significant role in forming and developing the people's understanding and practice of human rights.

The paper seeks to examine the concept of just energy transitions within the broader context of climate justice in India. The emergence of the discourse of ‘just energy transitions’ witnessed in the aftermath of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has led to a revival of the debate on the meaning and application of just energy transitions. Despite its criticisms at the global level in terms of promoting narrow plurilateralism, the paper argues that within the domestic context, the framework can open avenues to contribute to the development of robust conceptions of climate justice at the subnational level. Providing the space for interrogating the vulnerable position of marginalized communities in India, it can explore how caste and gender identities have often worked to hinder equitable access to natural resources, thereby undermining climate justice at the subnational level. This is further compounded by the existing climate governance mechanisms which prioritize market mechanisms over rights-based approaches, and by the judicial discourses which often do not take into account the trade-offs involved in sustainable development policies and community rights. In this context, the paper explores how the lacuna of diverse perspectives in India’s domestic climate justice framework can be addressed by the emergent just energy transitions framework.

This panel will consider key contemporary issues in law, governance and security in Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia, including national security laws, the role of the military, and limitations on freedom of expression.

China’s economic experiments have attracted sustained scholarly attention, while the experiments in the judicial domain have received little notice. This article examines how the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has emerged as a rule-maker through judicial experimentation. In contrast to the relatively modest legislature—the National People’s Congress (NPC)—the SPC has proactively issued judicial interpretations and documents to construct foundational legal norms in the private and commercial sector. Once proven effective in practice, many judicial rules will be codified into formal legislation by the NPC.

Situating the SPC within broader judicial development in Asia, this article identifies the distinctiveness of China’s judicial experimentalism. Unlike other Asian courts that derive rule-making legitimacy from constitutional mandates or common law traditions, the SPC operates with limited legislative authorization and legitimacy. It can even generate binding norms without any case basis. This article argues that, as part of China’s broader governance logic of “crossing the river by feeling the stones” in the post-Mao era, the legitimacy of judicial experimentalism is grounded in legal pragmatism and instrumentalism rather than formal legality. More broadly, this study may also contribute to judicial power expansion in Asia by highlighting how courts strategically construct authority within restrictive institutional environments.

Tsushima, a remote island situated between Japan and South Korea, is the third-largest island in Japan, with an estimated population of 30,000. Despite the fact that older adults comprise approximately 40% of the population—and the pace of demographic aging is rapidly accelerating—Tsushima has long been regarded as a “barren land” in terms of adult guardianship. Until recently, the number of adult guardianship cases processed on the island remained extremely low. This phenomenon is believed to result from a combination of economic, informational, and psychological barriers—commonly cited obstacles to access to justice—as well as Tsushima’s distinctive geographical isolation and tightly knit community structures. Consequently, the use of formal legal procedures in general, not only adult guardianship, has remained limited in this region.
A significant shift occurred with the arrival of a full-time public attorney from an urban area outside the island. Motivated by the question of why legal systems, particularly adult guardianship, were so underutilized in Tsushima despite evident demographic need, the lawyer engaged in a variety of collaborative efforts with local social service providers. Of particular note was her work in developing a framework for implementing corporate guardianship through the social welfare council in Tsushima. As a result of these initiatives, the number of adult guardianship-related cases increased substantially—from zero in 2015 to over 20 cases annually by 2020—with the trend continuing upward in subsequent years.
This study examines the dynamic process through which legal practice was adapted and expanded in a geographically isolated setting, with a particular focus on the role of the legal professional in facilitating systemic change.

How does the illegal stablecoin market operate in Mainland China?
Based on 30 semi-structured interviews, this study examines the
mechanism of the stablecoin market in China, focusing on the
transaction behaviors of retail investors and OTC brokers. The
stablecoin market in China manifests in three scenarios: online
exchanges, including C2C (customer to customer) trades, semi-C2C
trades and off-platform trades. This study explores the risks faced by
Chinese participants in the stablecoin market and how they manage
these transaction risks without state protection. This research provides
empirical insights into a non-Western illegal market, enriching
criminology literature in this field.

Keywords: cryptocurrency, stablecoins, illegal market, risk, credible
commitment, trust

Abstract:

The project is called 'free nutritious meal' (MBG). This is a 'right populist wing' program, launched by Prabowo’s administration after winning electoral politics in Indonesia, 2024. Through a number of Presidential policies, this project has changed much the legal system that have tremendous impacts on budget policies, especially in the public service sectors, education, health, taxation, and many other budget cuts in the name of efficiency.

The fundamental issue in this project is how the government has enacted laws and its operational policies by orchestrating ‘progressive realization’ narratives, in the field of right to food. The narrative and underpinned laws are questionable due to little correlation to the fulfilment of the state’s responsibility in implementing right to food. On the contrary, this MBG political project actually spends funds on trillions of funds related to ‘food estates’ as part of ‘securitization’, which accelerate deforestation rate and damage natural resources excessively. Even, based on ‘food security’ program, Ministry of Defence has deployed military troops in securing such MBG’s projects. Hence, MBG has been enabling the acceleration of military business, ‘state captured corruption, as well as systematic human rights violation, including the restriction and even silencing criticism on MBG projects.

This article provides arguments on first, how the MBG’s right to food project has been easily manipulated through legal politics and its digital propagandas, in order to underpin military interference into business, and second, how a human rights project in a country can actually accelerate to systematic crimes of violating economic, social and cultural rights, through normalising abuse carried out by militarised governance as well as 'state captured corruption'.

The pivotal role that the private sector plays in serving the interests of future generations has received renewed awareness in recent years. This article takes a deeper dive into corporate sustainability due diligence responsibilities from a global perspective. In 2024, the European Union (EU) adopted the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), aiming to foster sustainable and responsible corporate behavior within companies’ operations and across their global value chains. The directive requires companies to identify and address the adverse impacts of their activities on human rights and the environment, with respect to their own operations, their subsidiaries, and the operations of their business partners along the companies’ value chains. In 2025, the European Commission proposed the Omnibus package, seeking to reduce the regulatory burden imposed by major sustainability-related frameworks in the EU, including the CSDDD. Furthermore, several EU member states had already introduced due diligence legislations at the national level prior to the CSDDD.

While these frameworks have been welcomed by many, they have also raised critical questions, such as whether they could be attempts to universalize European values while reinforcing existing power hierarchies. This article seeks to contribute to the field by examining the CSDDD from a Global South perspective. It analyzes the impact of the framework – particularly in light of the amendments introduced by the Omnibus package – in major emerging markets such as China. The purpose is to shed light on the importance of Global South communities developing their own due diligence legislations. In the absence of such efforts, there might be a substantial risk that the Global South will (overly) rely on legal frameworks originating from the Global North, thereby reinforcing the existing asymmetric relationship between the two.

ASEAN is an ethnically diverse region with abundant natural resources that contribute significantly to global economic growth and stability. At its core, the ASEAN community strives to foster peace, collaboration, and sustainable resource usage in order to improve the quality of life for all of its citizens. ASEAN is an international organization in the South East Asia region that comprises member states with diverse and abundant natural resources, one of which includes nickel. Nickel exploration, exploitation, and export is currently referred to as "The New Gold" in global trade and economics. This resource is like a two-sided coin; it has a good impact on economic growth while simultaneously having a detrimental impact on environmental aspects such as biodiversity loss. The global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy technologies encourages ASEAN to actively participate in a strict and consistent role to hegemonize an uncontaminated environment and create a flourishing society.

Access to justice is generally discussed under the assumption that an individual has already encountered and experienced legal problems. There are physical, psychological, financial, and informational barriers to accessing the legal system to address such problems . However, similar to preventive medicine and care, some individuals may wish to access the legal system to prevent future legal issues. Accessing justice for preventive purposes is particularly important in middle and old age, as it becomes more difficult to deal with legal problems later in life. In such cases, individuals may face barriers when trying to access legal services . Therefore, this study aims to explore the preparatory actions of middle-aged and older adults regarding future legal challenges and to discuss the theory of “preventive access to justice” based on a survey analysis.
To identify people’s attitudes and preparations for future legal challenges, such as writing a will, arranging voluntary guardianship, and drafting advance directives, a web survey was conducted in February 2023. The author created the questionnaire, and a research company administered the survey to selected panelists. Over 3,000 survey panelists aged 50 to 69 completed the questionnaire, which consisted of two parts: preparation for inheritance and preparation for declining cognitive capacity . This study primarily focuses on the latter. The results showed that while more than 35% of the respondents identify the need to take action, such as creating an informal document, discussing with family members, or considering voluntary guardianship, far fewer respondents had actually made such preparations. Based on the survey results, the study discusses challenges in improving preventive access to justice.

This paper examines a forgotten part of Indonesian history involving three actors: the Sultanate of Aceh, the Italian government, and the informal emissary Celso Cesare Moreno. Between 1860 and 1873, Aceh attempted to break its diplomatic isolation by seeking protection from European powers, including France, Italy, and the United States. This search, embedded in a hybrid framework of Islamic law, adat, and regional power logic, failed due to the incompatibility of legal languages, the ineffectiveness of self-appointed intermediaries, and the indecision of emerging European actors.
Methodologically, the study combines diplomatic archival research (Italy, NL), textual analysis of Acehnese court chronicles (Hikayat Aceh, Hikayat Perang Sabil), and legal-historical evaluation. Central to the narrative is the case of Celso Moreno, a Piedmontese adventurer who married Princess Fatimah, daughter of Sultan Ibrahim Mansur Syah. Under adat and Islamic norms, this marriage created a form of symbolic adoption, allowing Moreno to act as an emissary. However, his initiative was undermined. Aceh’s initiative sounds erratic but was not completely naive: it reflected a sophisticated attempt to survive through legal innovation. Letters were sent to the Ottoman Empire, Napoleon III, and the US Secretary of State; diplomatic missions were planned and executed; strategic marriages were employed. But all these attempts failed in front of the European/Western system to recognize a non-European legal actor and for the pressure of the national interest of the Kingdom of Netherlands in the region. This paper thus reconstructs a threefold failure: Aceh’s thwarted bid for recognition, the structural limits of informal mediation, and the Italian state’s dismiss of this too much hazardous colonial opportunity. In doing so, it reframes “peace-making” not as a matter of treaty-making per se, but as a historically contingent negotiation between incompatible legal ontologies and national interest alignments.

In many countries around the world, the military is back as a legal actor. This was evident in 2023 when the Secretary General of the UN called for an end to military rule. However the military is not only involved in governance through overt military rule. In many countries, the military is a persistent and long term legal and political actor, particularly in parts of Africa and Latin America as well as across Asia. In the latter, examples range from the role of the military in Myanmar to Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Pakistan. This paper offers an exploration of the military as a legal actor from a sociological perspective. I begin by considering the military as an institution and its distinctive features, which have long been the focus of political scientists and security sector studies scholars. I identify and explain several broad ways of conceptualizing the military and its role in governance: the military as subordinate to civilian institutions; the military as an infiltrator of civilian institutions; or the military as a fourth branch of government. Adding to the military turn in studies of constitutionalism, I then suggest a future agenda for the study of the military and its relationship to law in society that requires us to make explicit our standard assumptions that the state and its legal institutions are civilian. This paper contributes to studies of constitutions in authoritarian regimes and to studies of constitutionalism in the Global South.

National security laws and policies must evolve with the changing nature of multidimensional threats, following best-practice responses. The Republic of Indonesia is no exception. Security threats to Indonesia as a nation now involve a broad range of actors, across areas such as social unrest, terrorism, natural disasters, pandemics, cyber threats and transnational criminal organisations. In recent years, Indonesian law has been slow to keep pace. Indonesia not only maintains a military-centric approach to national security law and practice , but also perpetuates a fragmented web of sometimes-conflicting legal instruments, leading to institutional rivalry and inefficiency.

This paper evaluates Indonesia's legislative approach to national security. The paper first explores the prevailing security threats in Indonesia, including security threats generally overlooked within government and public discourse. Next, the paper brings all of Indonesia’s security-related laws and regulations together in one place, analysing the historical development of Indonesia’s national security laws to date and assessing whether these laws are still fit for purpose, noting Indonesia’s longstanding preference for a military-based approach over a civil-based one in shaping its national security policies. The paper concludes by suggesting areas of potential reform, both for the country itself and for similarly-situated nations looking to Indonesia as an example.

This paper examines the role of Indonesia's Constitutional Court and Supreme Court in the 2024 elections, during which President Jokowi's eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka (Gibran), successfully ran for the vice-presidency, and his younger son, Kaesang Pangarep (Kaesang), was prevented from running for Jakarta's gubernatorial election. Through detailed analysis of the presidential age limits case, the post-election dispute, and the gubernatorial age limits cases, we investigate whether the judiciary was instrumentalised to legitimise dynastic politics. In addressing this question, we seek to trace the ways in which the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court may have acted to undermine democracy by serving the political objectives of the Jokowi administration. In addition, we highlight the role of civil society and public engagement in resisting political dynasties, as demonstrated by the successful challenge of Kaesang's candidacy in the Jakarta's election. Using doctrinal and socio-legal approaches, we aim to contribute to the academic literature on the judiciary's influence during elections in a fragile democracy such as Indonesia.

Surrogacy involves gender, technology, ethics, law, and society, and has long been one of the most controversial issues in reproductive justice. The main reason lies in the requirement for another woman to undergo assisted reproduction, endure the physical demands of pregnancy for nine months, suffer the pain of childbirth, and relinquish parental rights afterward. Regardless of how the law is designed, surrogacy is often criticized for exploiting women, exacerbating class inequality, and commodifying children.
In light of this, this paper analyzes the major obstacles and potential solutions to the lack of legalization of surrogacy in Taiwan over the past 30 years, including whether it should be compensated, how to reduce exploitation of women, how to legally establish parent-child relationships, and who should have access to surrogacy services.
The research methods employed are comparative law and literature analysis. Since surrogacy laws in some U.S. states have evolved from prohibition in the 1990s to allowing surrogacy under certain conditions in recent years, this paper seeks to explore the factors behind these changes and what insights they may offer Taiwan.
This paper analyzes the drivers behind legislative reform in the U.S., differences between old and new laws, and the influence of gender advocacy groups. It then categorizes types of surrogacy regulations, examines how recent legislation addresses concerns about the exploitation of women and the commodification of reproduction, and finally identifies a trend in regulatory change toward protecting gestational mothers’ bodily autonomy and combating discrimination.

Board of Trustees Meeting.

Since the mid-20th century, many former postcolonial states have engaged in multiple constitution-making exercises, with the turnover in written constitutions often due to coups or internal conflict. Conversely, people have resisted authoritarian rule through alternative constitution-making. The reality that most countries have had numerous official and unofficial constitutional texts begs the question: How do past constitutions matter in the present? This book explores the social life of constitutional legacies, or how past constitutions matter. Using the case of Myanmar, Professor Crouch demonstrates that constitutions are a palimpsest of past texts, ideas, and practices, an accumulation of contested legacies. Through constitutional ethnography, The Palimpsest Constitution traces Myanmar's modern constitutional history from the late colonial era through its postcolonial, socialist, and military regimes. The Palimpsest Constitution captures the idea that contemporary debates about constitutional reform are informed by the contested legacies of the past.

Regulating environmental and human rights damages caused by transnational corporations in host States is a core issue in business and human rights discourse. In current regulatory practices, host States, which are territorially based and should bear primary regulation responsibility, face dual challenges at both domestic and international levels, leading to their continued marginalization. Specifically, host States as TNC damage regulators are constrained domestically by territorial jurisdiction limitations and internationally by the neoliberal international economic order exemplified by investment protection mechanisms. Taking China as sample, it currently lacks a comprehensive regulation system to address TNC damages; while domestic constraints manifest as the marginalization of judicial regulation, the absence of corporate duty of care, and inadequate extraterritorial regulation effectiveness, international constraints are reflected in the absence of foreign investor obligations in investment agreements and the asymmetry of dispute resolution clauses, challenging regulatory sovereignty. As China continues to advance its policy of high-quality opening up, the risks of negative externalities from transnational capital will continue to increase, necessitating a focus on building and perfecting a regulation mechanism for TNC damages within the framework of international law. To address domestic constraints, it is essential to clarify the division of regulation responsibilities between judicial and administrative bodies, promote the normalization of judicial regulation, and enhance judicial oversight of governmental settlements. Improving the choice of law rules for cross-border torts and the standards for parent company liability for omissions, and enhancing extraterritorial judicial effectiveness through transnational judicial dialogue and cooperation mechanisms are also crucial. To counteract international constraints, specifying investor obligations in investment treaties and designing symmetrical dispute resolution clauses are indispensable to eliminate regulatory chill. Additionally, actively advancing the implementation of TNC obligations in business and human rights treaty negotiations will lay an international legal foundation for the regulation sovereignty of host States.

The concept of institutional articulation denotes the strategic integration of Western-derived legal systems with the religious traditions and political contexts of Muslim societies, fostering novel institutional functions and plural legitimacy structures. This paper empirically examines Malaysia to explore how states selectively mobilise five dimensions of legitimacy—legal, religious, doctrinal, customary, and social—to enhance governance legitimacy.
In Muslim states, the institutional integration of religious authority and political power complicates the Western legal distinction between religion and state. While this integration raises concerns regarding legal stability and individual rights, it also offers significant benefits, particularly in bolstering governance legitimacy and maintaining social order. Religious authority is inherently pluralistic, encompassing diverse interpretations, regional customs, and societal endorsement. Such multiplicity presents institutional management challenges, notably in defining authority boundaries and ensuring normative coherence.
This study investigates how religious authority is institutionally embedded within state governance frameworks, shaping legitimacy formation. Drawing on the concept of institutional articulation as discussed by Talal Asad, Hussein Ali Agrama, and Sally Engle Merry, it highlights the dynamic interactions between state and religion beyond mere normative coexistence.
Using a "plural legitimacy" framework, the research traces the evolution of religious authority from doctrinal legitimacy through institutional acknowledgment, acquiring legal status, and finally gaining widespread social acceptance. Comparative analyses of Malaysia, Morocco, and Egypt reveal varied state strategies for institutionalising religious authority: Malaysia strategically mobilises multiple legitimacy dimensions, Morocco centralises authority under its monarchy, and Egypt navigates a delicate equilibrium between doctrinal autonomy and administrative oversight.
Ultimately, the research repositions Islamic modernity as a distinctive form of contemporary governance, underscoring institutional negotiation rather than simplistic separation or fusion of religion and state.

According to IMF statistics, Japan's nominal GDP per capita has fallen to 38th place (2024). Aside from the ranking, the fact that the figure has not increased for over 30 years and has been declining in recent years is a bigger problem. Japan's relative decline in economic power is leading to a loss of confidence in the structure of Japanese society and among the Japanese people, bringing about various changes. One of the biggest changes is how we interact with foreigners.
For many years, Japan and the Japanese people have had a strong sense of confidence in their title of "advanced nation," and have believed that they are superior in every way, especially to other Asian countries. However, this is an illusion, and Japan and the Japanese people, who have neglected to change, are likely to perceive diversity as "fear." What lies ahead is a new "攘夷"(JYOU-I, expulsion of foreigners) policy in the 21st century, and a further decline in Japan's international status.
In this session, researchers in their 30s to 60s with extensive knowledge of Asian countries will discuss the vulnerability of Japanese society from various perspectives, including community, education, information, and law, and consider the role of law and society.

In post-authoritarian democratic states, how do constitutional courts deal with the authoritarian-era structures that persist into the democratic present? One such structure is national security law—a legal tool favored by authoritarian regimes and one whose legacy can disrupt the landscape of a post-authoritarian democracy. Although many studies have focused on national security law in hybrid or authoritarian regimes, far fewer studies have explored the law’s ramifications for post-authoritarian democracies. In this study, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach to examine how the constitutional courts in South Korea and Taiwan—two post-authoritarian democracies with similar trajectories—navigate these legal legacies. The Korean Constitutional Court exhibits an exceptionally deferential posture, grounded in a fixed perception of security threats that remains unchanged despite regime transition. In contrast, the Taiwanese Constitutional Court interprets pre-democratization security narratives as artifacts of the former regime, requiring reinterpretation and transformation over time. This comparative analysis shows how courts engage with authoritarian legacies through the lens of national security, shaping not only liberal democratic values but also evolving concepts of threat and collective security. In doing so, they contribute to the ongoing constitutional negotiation between liberty and security at the heart of post-transition constitutional democracy.

Accepting foreign talent is not so easy these days. Japan's declining competitiveness means that it is no longer an attractive labor market, and it is falling far behind in the race to attract foreign workers. However, more serious than these issues is the fact that Japanese society as a whole is intolerant of foreigners, or, to put it more simply, that it feels "fear" towards them. It seems that even the Japanese themselves have a certain belief that "Japanese people are weak," and this "belief" is likely to be contributing to the xenophobic style of Japanese society.
In this report, I will ask the question, "Are the Japanese weak?" and approach the essence of the problem, especially from the perspective of education, while taking into account Japan's modern history. More specifically, through an analysis of social studies education after the Pacific War, I would like to clarify why Japanese people have come to believe that Japanese society is weak.

In recent years, Asian countries have been made efforts to jointly addressing sustainable development issues with developed regions of the EU through trade cooperation frameworks. Especially, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore, have incorporated Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in their Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the EU. The key question remains: Can TSD obligations in EU FTAs function as independent commitments beyond trade rules, and why do labour and environmental provisions face divergent interpretations in their legal implementation?

This study examines the divergent implementation of labour and environmental provisions in EU FTAs through case studies of the Ukraine Wood Products and Korea Labor Commitments disputes. The Ukraine case established that environmental measures could qualify under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article XX(b) exceptions. Conversely, the Korea case confirmed labour provisions set the independent obligations that do not always need to fulfill the condition of trade-related. The research finds that environmental provisions are easier to align with the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, while labour provisions face broader interpretation challenges. Because most developing countries resist addressing labor issues through trade mechanisms, while environmental issues present sufficient practice and consideration in the WTO.

The paper suggests that it is necessary to establish a strategic interpretation rule: Labour provisions require more cautious interpretation guided by the International Labour Organization (ILO) standards and practices to prevent excessive overreach. The environmental provisions, however, can serve as the connection between TSD obligations and existing trade-related rules. An inclusive approach is needed, ensuring labour protections remain reasonable while using environmental rules to bridge trade policy with sustainable development goals. By doing so, the practical significance of the TSD provisions can be reflected in promoting sustainable development goals and further interpreting trade-related rules.

The abstract of the first paper (in no more than 200 words): In recent years, Japan has begun to accept more foreign workers as result of labor shortages. However, tensions have emerged as individuals of different nationalities attempt to live together in shared communities. While Japanese society continues to advance toward individualization, some foreign residents place a higher value on ethnic solidarity, leading to differences in daily customs, values, and communication styles. These differences have, in certain instances, escalated into community-level conflicts and even riots. Such cases are no longer isolated but reflect a broader global trend in increasingly diverse societies. This study examines the friction that arises between the ideals of diversity and the practical challenges of everyday coexistence. By focusing on the Japanese context as a microcosm of global multicultural tensions, this paper explores whether a balance can be struck between individualistic and nationalistic tendencies. It also considers how societies might foster mutual understanding without compromising the core values of either group. This inquiry contributes to broader discussions in contemporary sociology on how to reconcile growing diversity with the persistent influence of cultural and national identities.

One may say that a state ceases to exist if it is annexed by another state. But what if the annexation is regarded as unlawful? In the world of norm, the annexed state may be recognized as existent despite its inability to exercise sovereignty, as the annexation is null and void. If the foreign rule comes to an end, the once annexed state may assert its identity and continuity with the state before annexation. In so doing, it would make its citizenship law in a way that underscores the continuity of peoplehood. Estonia and Latvia carried out this project in radical ways even to the point of making a large percentage of residents stateless by turning the clock of law back to a point more than half a century before. The Republic of Korea’s position vis-à-vis Japan is comparable notwithstanding weaker international recognition. This study examines major discursive practices of the Republic of Korea in asserting its identity and continuity with the pre-annexation Korean state with reference to the genealogical explanation of its citizenry. It shows the commitment of the Republic of Korea to its integrity of statehood penetrating its executive and judicial practices with all gaps in its discourse.

Constitutional ideology is the set of rules that form a social group’s worldview contained within the constitutional order. Its importance lies in defining what can or cannot be argued within constitutional institutions. Collective memories of individuals can be objects of constitutional ideology, which enshrine the identity and moral values of the group. This research examines its changes by asking the following question: How is a particular constitutional ideology being reasserted when it has been under challenge from other ideologies and worldviews?

Inspired by theories of ‘urban regeneration’, this paper coins the term ‘mnemonic regeneration’ to describe processes where the constitutional ideology of collective memory is reaffirmed to fend off challenges from worldviews. It examines the example of ‘heroes and martyrs’ in China and its effort to combat the perceived problem of ‘historical nihilism’. The argument is that regeneration projects revitalize normative frameworks of political ideals that are potent to constitutional order to curb challenges from: a) external – other ideologies and worldviews; b) internal – corruption by the state and party officials. However, like the exclusive nature of ‘urban regeneration’ projects that exclude marginalized communities, ‘mnemonic regeneration’ projects also reinforce the exclusion of other ideologies, activities, and group members. To do so, this paper will not only examine China’s Constitution, its legal statutes (such as the 2018 ‘Protection of Heroes and Martyrs Law’), and judicial cases, but also historical party documents and newspapers.

This research engages a dialogue with the literature of ‘law and collective memory’, which examines law’s (in)ability to enshrine interpretations of the past. The scholarship largely focuses on ‘post-authoritarian’ regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper contributes by blurring the boundaries between ‘authoritarian’ and ‘democratic’ governance of collective memories via highlighting similarities and bringing socialist states like China into the discussion.

In this paper, from the standpoint of information sociology, I would like to sketch an emerging "New Nationalism" 2025, in Japan.

There’s no need to give statistic prove here “Lost 30 years’” are real situation, involving economic inflation after long stagnation resulting countless social problems. It is often said Japanese Nationals are modest and obedient, non-assertive even under the long-lasting political regime by the Liberal Democratic Party.

But now especially involving young generation, we can clearly observe there are forming "New Nationalism" and even social movements centered young generation, especially utilizing SNS in Japan. One of the result is seen in the winners of Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election. Main topic was around Government Tax usage and immigrant polity.

We can point out here “New Nationalism” is forming throughout the internet media and even in traditional media. There are several aspects Nationalism here. "For some, nationalism is a fully-fledged ideology and the central principle of society. For others, it is just one of the political doctrines" (Heywood 2012).

Reference:
Abe DN Naoki 2024, “Analysis of Exchanging Value as a Method of Information Sociology: Taking examples of Credit Scoring and Evaluation Service by Social Credit System like Sesame Credit in China”,  Journal of Intelligence Science in Local Research, 1(1) 41-53

Abe DN Naoki 2023, “Disembedding and Re-embedding in Information Society : Unstoppable Process of Identification and Loss of the Unique Identity and Identification of Process“, Bulletin of Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture, 60 177-184

Heywood A., 2021, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, Bloomsbury Academic

This presentation explores care as a constitutional right in the Korean context. Care involves three elements: the caregiver, the care-receiver, and the act of caring—actions that allow a person to survive. Care exists because all beings are fundamentally dependent on external support. In physical terms, life must constantly resist entropy increase, and it can only do so through a continuous influx of energy and matter from its environment. From the standpoint of the individual, this is dependence; from the standpoint of the environment, this is care. Human care has specific features: we rely primarily on other humans rather than directly on nature; caregiving relationships carry inherent power imbalances; and our need for care changes dramatically across the lifetime. These characteristics lead to injustice in caregiving. Hans Jonas’ philosophy provides a useful insight to address this problem: responsibility arises not only from one’s actions but also from one’s power. Because caregivers hold greater power, they bear corresponding responsibilities for dependents. Constitutionally, this raises the question of how much of the state’s caregiving responsibility should be legally recognized—as a general principle, a state duty, or a fundamental right. Internationally, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has already recognized a right to care, including the rights to receive care, provide care, and care for oneself. Although the Korean Constitution does not explicitly use the word “care,” a recent Korean Constitutional Court decision on newborn birth registration illustrates a possible breakthrough. The Court recognized a constitutional right to be registered immediately after birth. As the state, newborn, and the birth registration meet the three elements of care, this new constitutional right can be best explained and supported by the logic of care. This opens even the possibility of future constitutional amendments explicitly recognizing a right to care.

This paper examines two responses to the global constitutional crises in the twentieth century, with a focus on a comparison between Carl Schmitt, a notorious German political theorist and critic of liberal constitutionalism and Zhang Junmai, a constitutionalist in Republican China. After the First World War, both Germany and China experienced constitutional crises, which prompted critical reflections among intellectuals. My paper is the first to discover and examine the latent element of Carl Schmitt in Zhang Junmai’s acceptance of the Weimar Constitution. By examining the intertextual relation between Carl Schmitt and Zhang Junmai, this paper reveals a latent aspect of the spectrum of Constitutionalism in the twentieth century and shows a special dialogue between a German critic of constitutionalism and a Chinese constitutionalist.
While Zhang seems to have simultaneously read and accepted parts of the ideas of Carl Schmitt and Schmitt’s liberal rivals, a hidden side in Zhang Junmai’s thought is his
acceptance of Schmitt’s critique of liberal understandings of the state and Rechtsstaat. My research is also the first to deeply explore the hidden intellectual impact of Max
Weber and Carl Schmitt on Zhang Junmai, especially on several key issues related to the
politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as the sovereign and sovereignty,
the depoliticising bourgeois intellectuals, the rise of economic interests and the decline of
politics and state theory, and so on.

Is Japanese society open to foreigners? Like many other countries, Japan is experiencing a rapid decline in the birthrate and an aging population, and the Japanese government is actively trying to accept foreign workers. However, various legal barriers make this difficult. The 2023 amendment to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act will make the already difficult process of refugee recognition even more difficult, and there has been a noticeable delay in measures against "illegal employment." In particular, human rights violations in detention facilities run by the Immigration Services Agency are well known, and the problem of "provisional release," which prohibits people from working, is also serious.

What is the background behind Japan's policy of this kind? Also, will these problems be overcome? In this report, I would like to examine some concrete examples and shed light on the structure of Japanese society that is so harsh on foreigners, particularly from the perspective of the legal system.

This paper critically examines normative theories of criminalisation—frameworks determining what conduct merits criminalisation and state punishment—across key East and Central Asian jurisdictions. Asian criminalisation discourse is dominated by two paradigms: social harm theory (emphasising damage to collective social relations, rooted in Soviet ideology and historically prevalent in Central Asia and China) and legal interest theory (prioritising protection of legally cognisable interests, derived from German jurisprudence and influential in Japan, Taiwan, and post-1990s China). Scholarly comparative analysis of these theories remains underdeveloped. Addressing this gap, the paper analyses the evolution of both theories in China, a critical case study demonstrating their influence and potential for state overcriminalisation. Comparative analysis reveals that while legal interest theory represents a doctrinal advance beyond social harm theory’s collectivist focus, both share fundamental limitations: conceptual circularity, over-inclusiveness in defining criminalisable conduct, and susceptibility to politicisation or majoritarian interpretation. Persistent reliance on singular theoretical principles within these diverse contexts inherently fails to constrain state penal power effectively, exacerbating risks of overcriminalisation, excessive punishment, and systemic inequity. The paper contends that promoting equitable criminalisation in Asia’s pluralistic legal landscapes necessitates moving beyond monopolistic adherence to any singular paradigm—whether domestically entrenched, politically transplanted, or regionally dominant. Achieving legitimate criminalisation requires contextually grounded evaluations, acknowledging dynamic interdependencies between criminalisation and the unique legal-cultural, historical, and social contexts of Asian jurisdictions. The paper advocates prioritising contextual legitimacy to mitigate potential unjust criminalisation and punishment arising from the abuse and overuse of state penal power.

This paper examines how the figure of “Child” is composed within recent reforms of Japan’s criminal justice system—specifically, the 2021 revision of the Juvenile Act and the 2023 reform of laws on sexual offenses. Drawing on discourse from legislative councils, expert hearings, and official research reports, the study employs Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Latour’s notion of composition to explore how legal, bureaucratic, and expert actors collaboratively assemble varying representations of “Child.” Instead of presuming a fixed or essentialist notion of childhood, the analysis focuses on how institutional assemblages actively constitute multiple, contingent versions of the child. The paper concludes by reflecting on how such practices of composition may destabilize traditional legal categories and challenge the structural coherence of the criminal justice system.

This paper examines how Indonesia’s Criminal Procedure Code (KUHAP), enacted in 1981, has evolved into a legal instrument that centralises coercive power in the hands of the police, undermining democratic accountability and human rights protections. Instead of serving as a neutral framework for due process, KUHAP facilitates unchecked arrests, prolonged detentions, and investigatory dominance by the police. Prosecutors are largely marginalised, treated not as dominus litis but as passive intermediaries, which further erodes institutional checks and balances. Using a socio-legal research approach, this study combines doctrinal analysis with fieldwork, including interviews with victims, defence lawyers, prosecutors, and civil society advocates, to explore how procedural law operates in practice. It also incorporates elements of participatory action research, particularly through collaboration with legal aid institutions and academic networks that advocate for reform. The author is actively involved in the ongoing KUHAP reform drafting process, allowing for direct insight into the legal-political dynamics shaping procedural change and the contestation among institutional actors. The paper situates KUHAP within the broader context of Indonesia’s democratic backsliding, highlighting how increasing militarisation and the consolidation of police authority reflect a shift toward authoritarian legal governance. Despite the 1945 Constitution’s guarantees of legal certainty (Article 28D) and protection from arbitrary arrest (Article 28G), current procedures fail to effectively enforce these rights. The new Criminal Code (KUHP 2023) introduces progressive material norms, but without corresponding procedural reform, these remain symbolic. Initial findings suggest that KUHAP primarily serves to legitimise state power rather than safeguard individual rights. Reform proposals, such as judicial oversight of arrest (hakim komisaris), enhanced prosecutorial control, exclusion of torture-based evidence, and digital transparency, face institutional resistance. Nonetheless, reform coalitions continue to push for alignment with constitutional and human rights standards.

The growing inability of international investment law to address pressing social inequalities reveals a structural disjunction between legal norm production and the evolving demands of global society. This article examines how institutional design can serve as a conduit for integrating social feedback into international economic law, particularly through comparative insights drawn from Asian legal systems. Using a law-and-society framework, the paper explores how selected jurisdictions—such as China and Japan—demonstrate a distinctive mode of judicial–legislative interaction, wherein courts provide interpretive input without displacing legislative authority. This model facilitates legal adaptation in response to social change, while maintaining coherence with sovereign decision-making structures.

Building on this institutional logic, the article reimagines sovereign states as active legislative agents in international treaty reform, rather than as passive subjects of international adjudication. It proposes a feedback-based model of treaty evolution in which domestic legal interpretation and adjudicative outcomes inform international legal development through structured state engagement. Particular attention is given to the treatment of property rights—a core component of investment law—highlighting how Asian jurisdictions embed social values into economic rights in ways that challenge liberal orthodoxy.

This comparative institutional perspective contributes to broader debates on the legitimacy and adaptability of international investment regimes. It suggests that integrating pluralist and socially grounded legal traditions—rather than relying solely on formalist or universalist approaches—can enhance the normative responsiveness of investment law. By conceptualizing legal institutions as mediators between international norms and domestic social demands, this article offers a reform-oriented framework grounded in both empirical practice and theoretical insight.

Is there any possible for us to have a democratic dispute resolution system, even in the cyberspace? In this paper, I draw on cases of several Chinese online platforms to suggest that democracy enhances the inclusivity of a dispute resolution system, significantly improving autonomy and identity of the community members. When state law fails to cope with the exploding number of online disputes, a new dispute resolution mechanism within online platforms has emerged. It lets ordinary platform members participate in dispute resolution by inviting them to vote on disputes, the process express their common belief about how should they build the shared community which constitute the legitimacy within platforms. This is an important challenge to the traditional resolution structures which are led by educated elites and professional officials rather than community mass. Although such democratic dispute resolution process can not guarantee a relatively high level of fairness in the outcome as traditional judicial process, it enables the ordinary members of the platform to dynamically lead the dispute resolution and integrate their own beliefs and ideas into the implementation of the platform's adjudicative rules, thus reconstructing both hegemony and legitimacy at epistemic level. This emerging non-state private dispute resolution allows us reconsider the value of inclusivity and autonomy in ODR context.

The development and issues of legal responses in the prevention of disasters and initial/emergency response and recovery phases after disasters in Japan will be reported based on the progress mainly over the 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, followed by many subsequent earthquakes such as the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in 2024. The main themes to be discussed include disaster condolence payments (disaster-related deaths), publicly funded demolition of damaged houses, livelihood reconstruction assistance programs for disaster victims, and disaster loan reduction and exemption programs. In addition, this paper will also examine the recently proposed and practiced disaster case management (a system in which related professionals and institutions work closely with disaster victims to provide necessary support to them by grasping their individual disaster and living conditions and formulating a plan that combines various support measures accordingly) and disaster response governance (a mechanism to discipline the various actors involved in disaster response, such as the national government, prefectures, municipalities, commercial enterprises, and third sector organizations, for the benefit of disaster victims). This paper concludes that the legal response to disasters is and should be shifted from the traditional application-based approach, where the legal relief procedures for various disaster victims are left to the parties themselves to apply for relief, to a more flexible approach, where each disaster victim is required to apply for relief on his/her own. This paper will also examine issues by comparing legal responses to disasters in Asia and other regions.

International financial institutions (IFIs) exert substantial influence over the food policies of their member States, and finance projects that significantly affect the food situation in these States. Despite this, the question of whether they have legal obligations to ensure the respect for, protection, and fulfilment of the right to food remains unclear. This article explores the possible obligations of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), one of the most powerful IFIs in the Asia Pacific region, in relation to the right to food. First, the article argues that the ADB has indirect human rights obligations through its member States, the majority of which are legally obligated to implement the right to food. Second, it explores other bases upon which ADB may be bound directly under international law. It argues, first, that the right to adequate food may have evolved into a customary norm; and second, that the ADB is a subject of international law and is thus bound by customary norms. It concludes that at a minimum, the ADB has an obligation to respect the right to adequate food, but there is no sufficient basis yet to explicitly claim that the ADB has an obligation to protect and fulfil such right. Nevertheless, the ADB has taken actions that align with the protection and fulfilment of the right to food.

The celebration of International Labor Day on May 1, 2025, across various cities in Indonesia was overshadowed by incidents of excessive force and violence employed by police officers against protesters, medics, and journalists who were documenting the demonstrations. The persistence of police violence can be attributed to the lack of accountability for both the individual officers involved and their superiors in prior incidents. This failure to impose consequences has fostered a culture of impunity within law enforcement agencies, allowing aggressive and unlawful behavior to go unchecked. As a result, the systemic issues that contribute to police brutality remain entrenched, creating an environment where officers may feel emboldened to act without fear of repercussions. This cycle not only undermines public trust in the police but also perpetuates a narrative of violence that affects communities disproportionately. This paper examined the lethal violence perpetrated by police during May Day rallies in Indonesia from the legal semiotics perspective through the language and actions used by police officers. By scrutinizing the language utilized by police officers in their interactions with protestors, alongside their non-verbal signals and physical behaviors, the research aims to reveal how these elements legitimize aggressive police actions. Our analysis draws on video footage from the demonstrations on May 1, 2025, alongside firsthand accounts from journalists present during the events, examining how excessive force was used to repel the demonstrators.

Much literature has already discussed how political factors have impacted China's death penalty since the launch of the Strike Hard campaign in 1983, but existing accounts have rarely explained China's death penalty changes from an economic perspective.
China's economic reforms since 1978 have evolved the country's state-planned economy into a market economy. In this context, the death penalty plays an important role in criminal policy by swiftly and severely punishing those who jeopardize public security.

This paper employs a historical analysis based on archival research within 8 cities in Mainland China, including speeches, memoirs, and anthologies from political and legal leaders; national and provincial yearbooks on crime, law, and justice; and meeting minutes and reports from provincial legislative and judicial organs. It describes the changes in China's death penalty law and practice within the context of the post-1978 economic reforms, and investigates whether and how shifts in economic conditions impacted China's death penalty in any way from 1980 to 2000.

The main findings of the study are threefold. First, China's political and legal leadership played a decisive role in shaping death penalty policy over the period, with both central and local laws and practice closely reflecting their intentions. Second, China's increasingly open market brought about a series of problems during the 1980s and 1990s, such as wealth inequality, unemployed rural migrants, and an immature market mechanism. These economic downsides precipitated notable changes in the death penalty for economic crimes, such as changes in death-eligible offenses, execution numbers, and review procedures. Third, the widespread application of the death penalty in China during this period served as a symbolic tool to showcase the authorities' efforts to combat crime and divert public attention from the structural problems caused by economic reform.

Drawing on examples from the recent past in East and Southeast Asia, this paper examines the interaction between politics, populism, and policy making in relation to state-sanctioned killings for drug offences. It also looks to other parts of the globe to consider how successful advocacy practices can be imported to reform and reshape the use of the death penalty for drug offences in East and Southeast Asia. Theoretically, the paper considers the role of norm diffusion, the importance of cultural context, the potential of hard power diplomacy and coalition theory in catalysing behavioural change. Illustrative case studies which demonstrate effective approaches in successful advocacy against the death penalty for drug offences, alongside a critical consideration of practices shown to be less successful in advocating change are explored.

A public apology is a social ritual that includes individuals and institutions involved in a wrongdoing and aims to restore the fractured relationship between them in a symbolic exchange. It is much more than mere acknowledgement of fault or expression of regret, as it involves a public declaration of guilt and remorse in an attempt to seek forgiveness, demonstrate accountability, and reestablish trust within a particular social and cultural context. When a public apology is prescribed by law, often referred to as apology law, it becomes entwined in a complex social field, reflecting the normative and political dimensions that define the mutually constitutive nature of the relationship between society and law. From a sociolegal perspective, therefore, public apology by law lies at the intersection of law, culture, and politics, in a dynamic social process. It is in this context that this study focuses on apology law relating to the pharmaceutical industry in Sri Lanka as a window through which to explore the idea of public apology. Specifically, this study examines the perceptions of pharmacists as key stakeholders who are required to make public apologies through paid advertisements in newspapers for certain violations of the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) Act No.5 of 2015. Using a questionnaire survey among a purposively selected sample of pharmacists, the study explores their knowledge and perspectives on the regulations as well as their attitudes towards the public apology as a form of promoting authenticity, transparency, accountability, and rebuilding trust. While the responses indicate the acceptance of public apology as an effective punishment, its restorative and rehabilitative value is seen as embedded in the larger social and political context that underscores the role of public apology in society.

Firearm access in Indonesia is highly restricted, and their use requires special permit, a situation that has nonetheless led to various cases of firearm misuse. Crimes involving firearms are not only strongly associated with severe acts of violence and fatal outcomes, but also reflect the complexity of offender motivations. Although numerous studies have documented that the presence of firearm can influence an offender’s emotional state and is associated to wide range of motives, no research in Indonesia has specifically examined the motivations of individuals who commit crimes using firearms.
This study employs a qualitative research design guided by the Behavioural Evidence Analysis (BEA) framework, integrated with established human aggression factors. Using in-depth interview techniques to gather rich data, this research aims to identify and construct the criminal profile of the participating firearm offenders. The findings indicate that the psychological characteristics of these offenders are determined by a complex interaction between: (1) individual emotional states (e.g., self-control deficits); (2) situational triggers; and (3) the influence of disinhibiting factors. Crucially, all criminal acts were facilitated and exacerbated by the offender’s access to firearms.

Keywords: firearms, motivation, behavioural evidence analysis, aggression

The growth of the imported secondhand clothing thrifting business in Indonesia has raised concerns among government officials regarding consumer health and safety. A number of studies have shown that imported secondhand clothing can contain harmful bacteria and viruses that pose a risk of skin disease. In response, the government has implemented a comprehensive ban on the import of secondhand clothing. However, thrifting continues to be practiced on a massive scale in various regions. This study aims to analyze and understand the extent to which the ban on imported used clothing is effective in reducing the thrifting business in Indonesia, and also to explore other alternative policies that are more proportional and less restrictive. the last one to analyze the compatibility of the ban on imported used clothing with the exceptions stipulated in Article XX letter b of GATT 1994.
This study uses a descriptive normative legal method, namely through the analysis of international legal documents and national regulations, as well as case studies on thrifting practices in Indonesia. The results of the study show that: First, the policy of banning the import of used clothing in Indonesia has not been effective in reducing the thrifting business in Indonesia. Policies that are more in line with the circumstances of society are needed in order to create prosperity for the community. Second, a total ban is not a solution to reduce the business of imported used clothing thrifting in Indonesia. Other alternatives that are less restrictive are needed in order to provide welfare for the community and the country, in terms of health, economy, and the environment.
Keywords: Import ban policy, Article XX(b) of GATT 1994, thrifting, international trade, consumer protection.

In terms of AI-assisted trial to the substantive justice, AI-assisted trial can promote the stability of laws and the purposefulness of the past orientation, but there are obstacles to the value judgment of laws and the purposefulness of future orientation. at present, the human-machine fusion path is used to construct the human-machine relationship in the trial, and the robot judge can be considered in the future.

Closing Session (Day 2 17:00-18:00)
Moderator (Program Committee Chair)
1. Awards Announcement and Presentation (ALSA President)
2. President’s Remarks and Board Announcements (ALSA President)
3. Announcement of the Next Conference (ALSA President)
4. Greetings from the Host Institution of the Next Conference (TBD)
5. Words of Thanks from the Organizing Committee (Yance)
6. Group Photo (taken from the stage toward the audience)