Courts are arguably one of the most important sites of a formal legal system.
They are probably the most studied sites in law and society research, despite a theoretical orientation to move away from formal legal institutions among sociolegal scholars (see, for example, Chapters 3 and 4).
However, what is a court for law and society research? And how do courts vary in Asian contexts? The answers to those two questions are not as straightforward as they seem to be. From the law and society perspective, a court can be studied as a physical or social space, a cultural symbol of justice or religious beliefs, a social organization or political institution, a formal or informal channel of dispute resolution, a site of legal, moral, or other discourses, or as a vehicle for authoritarian rule or political change.In addition to those theoretical variations, courts in Asia also follow different legal traditions and bureaucratic structures, and some judicial systems are more secretive or corrupt than others. As a result, there is no single best sociolegal approach to the study of courts, and Asian law and society researchÂers have offered a large body of scholarship on the social structure, culture, personnel, and politics of courts. Some use participant observation in courtÂrooms or interviews with judges, while others collect archival data from judicial documents or media sources. There is an additional literature on the judicialization of politics, mainly using quantitative methods and publicly available data sources. In recent years, the impact of digitalization on Asian courts has also become a burgeoning research topic. This chapter aims to
present a snapshot of this diverse range of scholarship with a selection of readings from seven different countries and jurisdictions.