Punishing Bodies, Securing the Nation: How Rule of Law Can Legitimate the Urbane Authoritarian State

Abstract

Although authoritarian rule of law may seem an oxymoron, strategic reconfigurations of the “rule of law” can produce acceptance of law that observes procedure while erasing rights. By bringing into conjunction critical discourse theory and scholarship on the legal professions and political liberalism, this article shows how rulers can deploy rhetoric and legislation to produce derogations from the liberal content of rule of law while sustaining a state legitimacy built on claims to state realizations of rule of law. A close analysis of Singapore's Vandalism Act shows that silencing the critique of lawyers and constraining the power of judges has been crucial to a legitimation of the surveillance and criminalization of dissenters. The consolidation of state power effected via law and discourse might be seen as making the nation a notional panopticon—corporal punishment, even if conducted behind prison walls, becomes instructive public spectacle conveying the state's seeming omniscience and monopolistic command of law.

State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice

“…In his 1941 book, Ernst Fraenkel developed the theory of the dual state, which comprises a normative state that operates according to the law and a prerogative state unconstrained by legal guarantees (Fraenkel 2017). Scholars find that modern authoritarian states, such as Singapore and Russia, similarly act according to rule-of-law principles under most mundane situations while frequently asserting control over legal issues with political significance (Hendley 2011; Trochev and Solomon 2018; Rajah 2011). The same phenomenon has been observed in China, especially following the recent judicial reforms that professionalized the courts but left formal channels for political intervention intact (H. Fu 2019; He 2020).…”

Activist Lawyers in Post-Tiananmen China

“… 7 It is up for debate exactly how judicial autonomy varies with the type of case. A number of scholars suggest bifurcated legal systems scrupulously follow laws related to commerce and the economy, while cases related to civil and political rights invite political interference (Silverstein 2003; Rajah 2011; Wang 2015). …”

Charting Socio-Legal Scholarship on Southeast Asia: Key Themes and Future Directions

“…33 It also informs a newer wave of law-and-development studies in Asia, 34 especially as governments turn not only to societies and lawyers traditionally associated with the importation of Western liberalism, but also the Southeast Asian trade partner of Singapore, 35 which is known for its use of law to engineer economic success while controlling political dissent. 36 In addition, studies on the social processes involving both local and colonial elites in the codification of Islamic law in Malaysia 37 and the relationship between law and Islam in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, can ameliorate an "Arabist bias" 38 in understandings about Muslim societies.…”