Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change. By Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 296 pp. $32.99 paperback.

• Date: 01 December 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12243
• Published date: 01 December 2016

This is by no means a linear trajectory of hope, optimism, and

empowered citizens. There are also sobering accounts of the range

of ways in which local authorities collaborate, deploy coercion, and

file counter-complaints – often in the form of criminal charges – to

punish and deter complainants. There are also accounts of shocking

brutality alongside the bureaucracy and politics of complaint.

Alongside the brutality the book documents – and it is such an

important thing that it does place on record judicial torture, deten-

tion without trial in quite horrific conditions, and the brutalizing of

peaceful demonstrators – the book also tracks and highlights aston-

ishing stories of people standing up for themselves and their com-

munities; resisting the law and order paradigm of conditional

privileges to assert rights, and claim justice.

In taking what animates Myanmar’s criminal courts seriously, it is

not just that we learn about Myanmar as a complex and paradigmatic

case of the asymmetrical relations between opposing concepts, we are

also supplied with a robust intellectual scaffolding through which we

might (hopefully) spot some conceptual blind spots informing analy-

sis of sociolegal ideals and categories in our own projects.

Opposing Rule of Law is beautifully written. The aesthetic sensi-

tivity of the writing becomes a worthy platform for the acute and

compelling analysis, the rigorous engagements with critical theory,

and the thorough appreciation of context and relational dynamics

grounded in ethnography. This important monograph will be

invaluable to scholars in a range of fields, including law, authoritari-

anism, postcoloniality, military regimes, Southeast Asia, and ethnog-

raphies on rule of law.

References

Mawani, Renisa (2012) “Law’s Archive,” 86 Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 337–65.

Nonet, Phillipe, & Philip Selznick (1978) Law and Society in Transition: Toward Responsive

Law. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.

Vismann, Cornelia (2008) Files: Law and Media Technology [translated by Geoffrey Win-

throp-Young].Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.

***

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change.By

Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2013. 296 pp. $32.99 paperback.

Reviewed by Sara C. Benesh, Department of Political Science, Uni-

versity of Wisconsin – Milwaukee

1048 Book Reviews