Jothie Rajah
Biographic Data
| ID | 1493126 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jothie Rajah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jothie |
| FAMILY NAME | Rajah |
| SIGNATURE | RAJAH J |
| AFFILIATIONS | American Bar Foundation |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0115-2252 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Home and International Law
Discounting Life
Extrajudicial, extraterritorial killings of War on Terror adversaries by the US state have become the new normal. Alongside targeted individuals, unnamed and uncounted others are maimed and killed. Despite the absence of law's conventional sites, processes, and actors, the US state celebrates these killings as the realization of 'justice.' Meanwhile, images, narrative, and affect do the work of law; authorizing and legitimizing the discounting of…
A Minor Jurisprudence of Spectacular War
The 2016 film, Eye in the Sky (Eye), features contestation among lawyers, politicians, and military personnel as to law’s values, meanings, and consequences. In other words, Eye is animated by jurisprudence. As jurisprudence, Eye represents contemporary drone warfare as a highly regulated legal system structured around an ethical valuing of civilian life. Given that drone warfare is known yet secret, by rendering drone warfare vivid and visible, …
Rule of Law Lineages
What does rule of law look like from beyond an Anglo-American perspective? This Commentary excavates a subterranean strand of Singapore’s rule of law discourse – rule of law as the necessary subordination of ‘the people’ – to argue that colonial ideologies are inevitably perpetuated and revitalized when the postcolony adopts rule of law as a pillar of the nation-making project
Flogging Gum
One of the funny things about living in the United States is that people say to me: ‘Singapore? Isn’t that where they flog you for chewing gum?’ – and I am always tempted to say yes. This question reveals what sticks in the popular US cultural imaginary about tiny, faraway Singapore. It is based on two events: first, in 1992, the sale of chewing gum was banned (Sale of Food [Prohibition of Chewing Gum] Regulations 1992), and second, in 1994, 18 y…
Language-and-Law Scholarship
Language-and-law research is now an established field for study, with decades of development behind it. And yet the field remains fragmented, with disparate streams of scholarship that, ironically, tend to speak in different languages: linguistic anthropology, discourse studies, semiotics, literary theory and rhetoric, translation studies, sociolinguistics, legal philosophy, and more. On one hand, this broad variety speaks to the robust character…
Authoritarian Rule of Law
Scholars have generally assumed that authoritarianism and rule of law are mutually incompatible. Convinced that free markets and rule of law must tip authoritarian societies in a liberal direction, nearly all studies of law and contemporary politics have neglected that improbable coupling: authoritarian rule of law. Through a focus on Singapore, this book presents an analysis of authoritarian legalism. It shows how prosperity, public discourse, a…
Punishing Bodies, Securing the Nation
Although authoritarian rule of law may seem an oxymoron, strategic reconfigurations of the “rule of law” can produce acceptance of law that observes procedure while erasing rights. By bringing into conjunction critical discourse theory and scholarship on the legal professions and political liberalism, this article shows how rulers can deploy rhetoric and legislation to produce derogations from the liberal content of rule of law while sustaining a…
Punishing Bodies, Securing the Nation
Although authoritarian rule of law may seem an oxymoron, strategic reconfigurations of the “rule of law” can produce acceptance of law that observes procedure while erasing rights. By bringing into conjunction critical discourse theory and scholarship on the legal professions and political liberalism, this article shows how rulers can deploy rhetoric and legislation to produce derogations from the liberal content of rule of law while sustaining a…
Discounting Life
Extrajudicial, extraterritorial killings of War on Terror adversaries by the US state have become the new normal. Alongside targeted individuals, unnamed and uncounted others are maimed and killed. Despite the absence of law's conventional sites, processes, and actors, the US state celebrates these killings as the realization of 'justice.' Meanwhile, images, narrative, and affect do the work of law; authorizing and legitimizing the discounting of…
Punishing Bodies, Securing the Nation
Although authoritarian rule of law may seem an oxymoron, strategic reconfigurations of the “rule of law” can produce acceptance of law that observes procedure while erasing rights. By bringing into conjunction critical discourse theory and scholarship on the legal professions and political liberalism, this article shows how rulers can deploy rhetoric and legislation to produce derogations from the liberal content of rule of law while sustaining a…
Authoritarian Rule of Law
Scholars have generally assumed that authoritarianism and rule of law are mutually incompatible. Convinced that free markets and rule of law must tip authoritarian societies in a liberal direction, nearly all studies of law and contemporary politics have neglected that improbable coupling: authoritarian rule of law. Through a focus on Singapore, this book presents an analysis of authoritarian legalism. It shows how prosperity, public discourse, a…
Flogging Gum
One of the funny things about living in the United States is that people say to me: ‘Singapore? Isn’t that where they flog you for chewing gum?’ – and I am always tempted to say yes. This question reveals what sticks in the popular US cultural imaginary about tiny, faraway Singapore. It is based on two events: first, in 1992, the sale of chewing gum was banned (Sale of Food [Prohibition of Chewing Gum] Regulations 1992), and second, in 1994, 18 y…
Language-and-Law Scholarship
Language-and-law research is now an established field for study, with decades of development behind it. And yet the field remains fragmented, with disparate streams of scholarship that, ironically, tend to speak in different languages: linguistic anthropology, discourse studies, semiotics, literary theory and rhetoric, translation studies, sociolinguistics, legal philosophy, and more. On one hand, this broad variety speaks to the robust character…
Rule of Law Lineages
What does rule of law look like from beyond an Anglo-American perspective? This Commentary excavates a subterranean strand of Singapore’s rule of law discourse – rule of law as the necessary subordination of ‘the people’ – to argue that colonial ideologies are inevitably perpetuated and revitalized when the postcolony adopts rule of law as a pillar of the nation-making project
A Minor Jurisprudence of Spectacular War
The 2016 film, Eye in the Sky (Eye), features contestation among lawyers, politicians, and military personnel as to law’s values, meanings, and consequences. In other words, Eye is animated by jurisprudence. As jurisprudence, Eye represents contemporary drone warfare as a highly regulated legal system structured around an ethical valuing of civilian life. Given that drone warfare is known yet secret, by rendering drone warfare vivid and visible, …
Discounting Life
Extrajudicial, extraterritorial killings of War on Terror adversaries by the US state have become the new normal. Alongside targeted individuals, unnamed and uncounted others are maimed and killed. Despite the absence of law's conventional sites, processes, and actors, the US state celebrates these killings as the realization of 'justice.' Meanwhile, images, narrative, and affect do the work of law; authorizing and legitimizing the discounting of…
Home and International Law
Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Asian Studies and History (4 works) · Law in Society and Culture (4 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (4 works) · Law (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Rule of law (3 works) · Authoritarianism (2 works)