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. My research shows that Zhang’s 1930 article, “Hugo Preuss (Author of the New German Constitution), His Concept of the State and His Position in the History of German Political Theory” (德國新憲起草者柏呂斯之國家觀念及其在德國政治學說史上之地位) is his Chinese translation of Carl Schmitt’s 1930 article, “Hugo Preuss: His Concept of the State and His Position in German State Theory” (“Hugo Preuss: Sein Staatsbegriff und seine Stellung in der deutschen Staatslehre”). Instead of simply regarding Zhang’s writing as plagiarism, my paper interrogates the gaps between Carl Schmitt’s original text and Zhang’s translation. 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.

Law enforcement institutions in India are undergoing fundamental media technological transformations, integrating digital media technologies into crime investigation, documentation, and presentation methods. This article seeks to understand these transformations by examining the curious case of 65-B certificates, a mandatory paper document that gatekeeps and governs the life of new media objects as evidence in the Indian legal system. In exploring the tensions that arise when bureaucratic institutions change their means of information production, the article reflects on the continued stubborn presence of paper at this transformative juncture in the life of legal institutions. By studying the role of paper in bureaucratic practices, analyzing jurisprudential debates and case law surrounding 65-B certificates, and thinking through some scattered ethnographic encounters around these certificates involving police officers, forensic scientists, and practicing lawyers, this article argues that despite ongoing digital transformations, law essentially remains a technology of paper.

This paper explores the reasons that divorce petitions by trafficked women in China were denied in courts in the wake of the chained woman incident. The author collected and examined divorce verdicts involving trafficked women from China Judgements Online. Among 100 unique cases, 87 were denied in their first attempts. Most of these cases were treated in the same way as regular divorce cases, with trafficking allegations either blatantly ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The author argues that the systematic denials and ignoring of trafficking allegations is enabled by a hegemonic legal consciousness within the Circuit of Trafficking that includes not only parties directly engaged in trafficking activities, but also state actors such as the judges and legislators who prioritise “family” preservation and social stability over the rights and well-being of trafficked women. Without addressing and changing this hegemonic legal consciousness, any reform, if it should take place, would be rendered futile in practice.

Dark patterns have become a pervasive issue around the world. However, Indonesia has not taken any action to deal with the situation. This article aims to analyse the issue of dark patterns in digital platforms from Indonesia’s consumer protection law perspective. It contends that Indonesia’s consumer protection law is not adequate in overcoming the issue of dark patterns in digital platforms. Several laws regulate basic principles and provisions that indirectly prohibit dark patterns, but these regulations can only be applied to certain forms of dark patterns and are difficult to implement. The article suggests that Indonesia must specifically regulate the prohibition of the practices of dark patterns in its current law. The regulations do not have to define the term “dark patterns” directly; however, they should expressly regulate prohibitions against the practice of using design interfaces in a way that subverts or impairs consumers’ autonomy and/or exploits consumers’ behavioural biases.

Leveraging blockchain technology in the energy sector holds immense potential, particularly in facilitating decentralised energy systems. However, the legal and regulatory landscapes of several countries, including Malaysia and Australia, pose significant obstacles to its effective implementation. This article examines the specific legal and regulatory hurdles hindering the incorporation of P2P energy trading systems in these two jurisdictions: Malaysia and Australia. Through a comparative analysis, the authors aim to provide valuable insights for policymakers and regulators seeking to develop comprehensive frameworks that encourage blockchain adoption in the energy sector. The article highlights the need to address the under-inclusiveness of laws, legal uncertainty around novel blockchain-based concepts like smart contracts, and the obsolescence of legal frameworks designed for traditional centralised energy systems. By examining Malaysia’s and Australia’s unique challenges, the article seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of the complexities of adapting legal and regulatory frameworks to accommodate this transformative technology.

This article explores Vietnam’s distinctive approach to data privacy regulation and its implications for the established understandings of privacy law. While global data privacy regulations are premised on individual freedom and integrity of information flows, the recent Vietnamese Decree 13/2023/NĐ-CP on Personal Data Protection (herein PDPD) prioritise state oversight and centralised control over information flows to safeguard collective interests and cyberspace security. The fresh regulatory logic puts data privacy under the regulation of government agencies and moves the privacy law arena even further away from the already distant judicial power. This prompts an exploration of the nuances underlying the ways regulators and the regulated communities understand data privacy regulation. The article draws on social constructionist accounts of regulation and discourse analysis to explore the epistemic interaction between regulators and those subject to regulation during the PDPD’s drafting period. The process is highlighted by the dynamics between actors within a complex semantic network established by the state’s policy initiatives, where tacit assumptions and normative beliefs direct the way actors in various communities favour one type of thinking about data privacy regulation over another. The findings suggest that reforms to privacy laws may not result in “more privacy” to individuals and that divergences in global privacy regulation may not be easily explained by drawing merely from cultural and institutional variances.

Sino-Arab Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have remained elusive over two decades of increasing economic relations and trade negotiations. Nevertheless, substantial investments and trade demonstrate the Arab region’s strategic importance to China. Recent strategic drivers of China’s engagement with the Middle East have evolved from an original energy security focus, to more recently integrating technological investments into partnerships, such as artificial intelligence and renewable energy infrastructure—complicating progress towards an FTA. Such measures can help progress achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and offer economic development opportunities, but negotiations may be hindered by concerns ranging from technological dependency to trade competition. Examining opportunities and challenges in the developing China–Arab relations, the article explores legal and policy obstacles and opportunities towards securing an FTA. With a focus on recent developments in AI and sustainability partnerships, the article analyses legal strategies and international law best practices for a model FTA for Arab countries.

The current unilateral and bilateral governance agreement cannot solve problems such as the large strength gap, loose organisation, and cultural diversity in cross-border data flow in Asia. Therefore, we are in urgent need of structuring a multilateral governance mechanism, that is, to build a mutual trust platform for cross-border data flow in Asia. From a digital technology perspective, the Asian Cross-Border Data Flow Trust Platform is a blockchain-based digital technology architecture. From the perspective of the organisational model, the Asian cross-border data flow governance based on the mutual trust platform can be understood as a cooperative network in which multiple Asian countries cooperate to make cross-border data decisions. As a necessary medium to eliminate the complexity of the cooperation network, legal procedures will transform the chaos on the Asian Cross-Border Data Flow Mutual Trust Platform into order by simplifying the communication between multiple agents.

Social-creative metaverses, which foster user creativity and encourage user-generated content, promise a revolution in digital creativity. However, metaverse developers often enforce strict regulations on user-generated content through user terms and conditions, restricting or permitting its reuse. These rules place an artificial barrier between users and their copyright, often waiving moral rights and making economic rights subject to mandatory licences. Using Second Life as a case study, this article demonstrates how metaverse regulations undermine users’ intellectual property rights and control over their creations. Furthermore, it examines emerging intellectual property policies in Japan, South Korea, and China, noting a lack of awareness regarding the impact of these regulatory layers on user creativity. Highlighting the importance of the external regulation of user terms and conditions, the article proposes potential policies and strategies for East Asia and beyond to protect users’ copyright ownership and mitigate the negative effects of restrictive metaverse terms and conditions.

This article examines the empire-wide legal professional community that emerged for the first time in Chinese history during the Qing period (1644–1911). By analyzing a wide range of archival records and primary sources, this study provides valuable insights into the dynamic configurations of late imperial China’s legal culture and juridical field, as well as the thousands of legal specialists who shaped them. The findings challenge much of the received wisdom about late imperial China, which has too often been assumed as a Confucian society that discouraged the use of law and legal expertise and was therefore unlikely to have witnessed so many Confucian literati becoming legal specialists, both within and outside the judicial system.

This article examines China’s first women’s prison in the context of diplomatic disputes, legal reforms, and gender order at the turn of the twentieth century. It shows that the custody of female offenders in the Shanghai International Settlement became a battleground in which the interests and perceptions of late imperial China and the Western authorities clashed. Under pressure from the Western authorities, the first Chinese women’s prison was established in 1907, even prior to the formal introduction of custodial sentences into China’s criminal code. Notably, the Chinese officials did not embrace prison as a more benevolent punitive institution; rather, they saw it more as a tool to consolidate its judicial sovereignty and preserve gender norms. For Chinese women, the prison, functioning as a re-cloistered feminine space, further entrenched the confinement of their bodies, thereby perpetuating rather than changing orthodox values of female chastity. This article questions the universal modernity of European penalties by pointing out that the introduction of imprisonment as a supposedly more civilized and humane form of punishment may have placed Chinese women at a greater disadvantage.

As ancient China and Rome transformed into empires, both states showed an increasing interest in regulating family ethics and individuals’ sexuality. Using excavated documents and transmitted texts, this article compares legal statutes and practices against illicit consensual sex in early imperial China (221 BCE–220 CE) with those in the Roman empire. On the one hand, both legal systems aimed at consolidating social hierarchies based on gender, status, and generation. On the other, the Roman and Chinese statutes had different emphases due to their respective political, social, and cultural contexts, and the actual penalties for adultery and incest differed significantly from those prescribed in the statutes. In both empires, control over individuals’ sexuality facilitated state power’s penetration into the family during empire-building, giving rise to laws in areas that had been largely left to customs and individual will.

This paper provides a detailed exploration of the sale of offices in China and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In France, the sale of offices became deeply integrated into the officialdom, effectively serving as a formal institution. It was a part of the financial framework and contributed to the operation of the bureaucracy. However, this practice led to public dissatisfaction due to concerns about the fairness of the judicial system. Conversely, in China, the sale of offices was less formalized and more directly associated with corruption due to the close connection with informal income and the challenge to the formal system of imperial civil examinations. It was considered an ad hoc, informal, and pragmatic solution to financial emergencies. The sale of offices, in a different context, was seen as having both positive and negative aspects, with its impact varying, depending on the specific function it served.

Free speech scholars have been preoccupied with laws, regulations, judicial opinions, and other traditional “legal” materials. However, this article examines an often-overlooked object in at least studying China’s speech rights—the ideological and cultural policy of the party-state. The party-state’s ideological and cultural policy has not only, for better or worse, profoundly shaped speech rights in China; and more significantly and paradoxically, it also contains the seed that might promote China’s speech rights in the future. The party-state has had a long and deep-rooted tradition of promoting a democratic culture; by tracing the development of this tradition from the 1940s to the 2000s, this article argues that it may provide a new context and angle for thinking about people’s right to cultural construction and perhaps free speech in general in China.