• New courts in the Asia-Pacific Region : law, development and judicialization / Andrew Harding and Pip Nicholson
• Legitimacy and the Vietnamese Economic Court / Pip Nicholson with Minh Duong
• "Reading the tea leaves" in the Indonesian Commercial Court : a cautionary tale, but for whom? / David K. Linnan
• The Intellectual Property High Court of Japan / Shigenori Matsui
• Specialized intellectual property courts in the People's Republic of China : myth or reality? / Connie Carter
• The Constitutional Court of Thailand, 1998-2006 : a turbulent innovation / Andrew Harding
• The Constitutional Court and the judicialization of Korean politics / Tom Ginsburg
• Institutional choice and the new Indonesian Constitutional Court / Hendrianto
• The Indonesian human rights court / Mark Cammack
• "Shopping forums" : Indonesia's administrative courts / Adriaan Bedner
• Genealogy of the administrative courts and the consolidation of administrative justice in Thailand / Peter Leyland
• Compromising courts and harmonizing ideologies : mediation in the administrative chambers of the people's courts of the People's Republic of China / Michael Palmer
• The politics of Indonesia's anti-corruption court / Benjamin H. Tahyar
• The Philippines' Sandiganbayan : anti-graft courts and the illusion of self-contained anti-corruption regimes / Raul C. Pangalangan
• Malaysian royalty and the Special Court / H.P. Lee
• Informed by ideology : a review of the court reforms in Brunei Darussalam / Ann Black
• Courts in Xinjiang : institutional capacity in China's periphery / Pitman B. Potter
• Japan's new criminal trials : origins, operations and implications / Kent Anderson and David T. Johnson
• Dollars to donuts : Japanese courts' new role as corporate regulator / Veronica L. Taylor.

This book discusses legal reforms across Asia involving the creation of new courts over the last 20 years, and examines to what extent they have succeeded or failed. During this period there have been numerous instances of the creation of new courts in Asia. These 'new courts' are mainly specialist courts, which have a specific jurisdiction, whether that is over cases involving intellectual property disputes, bankruptcy petitions, commercial contracts, public law adjudication, personal law issues, labour or industrial disputes. This trend has clearly intensified since the economic crisis of 1997/8 and the consequent emphasis on good governance and commercial dispute resolution. The justification of this trend towards 'judicialization' has been that implementation of Western-style rule of law is necessary for the development of the market economy, democratization, good governance and the upholding of human rights.Adopting an explicitly comparative perspective, and contrasting the experiences of important Asian states including China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia, this book considers critical questions including: why has the 'new-court model' been adopted, and why do international development agencies and nation-states tend to favour it; what difficulties have the new courts encountered; how have the new courts performed; and, what are the broader implications of the trend towards the adoption of judicial solutions to economic, social and political problems. In addition, it considers critics of court building who allege that it is a Western agenda that does not serve local interests, and that the emphasis on judicialization marginalises alternative local and traditional modes of dispute resolution. This book will not only be of interest to legal scholars and practitioners, but also to development specialists, economists and political scientists.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)