Christoph Antons is Chair in Law at the School of Law, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Australia; Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation; Affiliated Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Germany. Roman Tomasic is Professor in the Law School at Durham University, UK.

• Contents: Introduction: law reform and legal change in East Asia; Part I Legal Change, Law Reform and the Rule of Law: Colonial law and the genesis of the Indonesian state, Daniel S. Lev; The transformation of Chinese law - from formal to substantial, Jianfu Chen; The rule of law and corporate insolvency in six Asian legal systems, Roman Tomasic and Bahrin Kamarul; The 'new' law and development movement in the post-Cold War era: a Vietnam case study, Carol V. Rose; What have we learned about law and development? Describing, predicting and assessing legal reforms in China, Randall Peerenboom. Part II Courts and Dispute Resolution: The myth of the reluctant litigant, John Owen Haley; The effects of liberalization on litigation: notes toward a theory in the context of Japan, Tom Ginsburg and Glenn Hoetker; China's courts: restricted reform, Benjamin L. Liebman. Part III Lawyers and Lawyering: The plight of China's criminal defence lawyers, Jerome A. Cohen; Client influence and the contingency of professionalism: the work of elite corporate lawyers in China, Sida Liu; The practice of law as an obstacle to justice: Chinese lawyers at work, Ethan Michelson. Part IV Law, Society and Legal Culture: Global markets and the evolution of law in China and Japan, Takao Tanase; Law and society studies in Korea: beyond the Hahm thesis, Kun Yang; Asian economic crisis, storytelling and legal institutions - a tale of two cities, Roman Tomasic. Part V Legal Pluralism, Religion and Gender: Towards gender equity in a developing Asia: reforming personal laws within a pluralist framework, Dinusha Panditaratne; The pursuit of the Perak regalia: Islam, law, and the politics of authority in the colonial state, Iza Hussin; The enigma of national law in Indonesia: the Supreme Court's decisions on gender-neutral inheritance, Ratno Lukito. Part VI Law, Tradition and 'Asian Values': 'We' v 'I': communitarian legalism in Singapore, Eugene K.B. Tan; Kings in the age of nations: the paradox of lèse