The Thai people have had a written legal code for at least 500, and possibly 1000 years. This book details that traditional code and its regional variants, prior to its recasting into Western form in 1880.

This colorful portrait of law and society during a period of rapid social change reaches a counter-intuitive conclusion about the role of law in injury cases: globalization has led ordinary Thai people to turn away from courts and lawyers and to embrace a form of religious practice that leaves them without any remedy for harms they have suffered.

This volume challenges the concept of Buddhism as an apolitical religion without implications for law.

The first book to provide a broad coverage of Thai legal history in the English language.

This is the first book to provide a broad coverage of Thai legal history in the English language. It deals with pre-modern law, the civil law reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the constitutional developments post-1932. It reveals outstanding scholarship by both Thai and international scholars, and will be of interest to anyone interested in Thailand and its history, providing an indispensable introduction to Thai law and the legal system. The civil law reforms are a notable focus of the book, which provides material of interest to comparative lawyers, especially those interested in the diffusion of the civil law.