Bound by Law: Filipino Rural Poor and the Search for Justice in a Plural-Legal Landscape

This book is not so much about law as about how rural poor people experience and negotiate the several systems of social regulation that shape and constrain the rural political landscape. The main title of the book—Bound by Law—helps to put forward some of the key themes found in its pages, which together underline the serious challenges that rural poor Filipinos in particular are confronted with daily in the search for justice, whether on a small scale or large. Much of this book is about those who must suffer such systems, for even though we live in a day and age when “rule of law” reform and judicial reform have become a standard component of democracy and development assistance and state-reform programs, share tenants and farm workers are a particularly vulnerable and marginalized class of citizen disputants who still remain largely neglected by such schemes.

• Jennifer C. Franco, Editor