This chapter explores how postcolonial reformers attempted to reconcile Brazil’s dependence on slavery and the slave trade within a nation-building project that emphasized it as an empire of law, order, and liberal citizenship. It discusses Brazil’s transition from a colony to a postcolonial nation, and analyzes the antislavery ideas that informed the building of the penitentiary in Rio as a crucible for modernizing the empire. By 1831, these postcolonial reformers converged around a philanthropic organization called the Sociedade Defensora da Liberdade e Independencia Nacional, whose objective was to modernize Brazil’s institution from colony to nation. The organization targeted abolition of the slave trade to Brazil and reform of its criminal justice system as two of its main objectives to anchor the empire on the path to progress, order, and economic prosperity. Analyzing the postcolonial debates on the abolition of the slave trade, legal reforms, and citizenship demonstrates that they were fundamental to the adoption of the penitentiary. Social reformers and antislavery advocates viewed the prohibition of the traffic as significant in resolving debates about race, nation, and citizenship in postindependence Brazil.

Due to centuries of Portuguese administration, Macao’s jurisprudence was profoundly influenced by Portuguese law. Laws concerning consent to treatment illustrate this, emphasising the Portuguese approach of allowing the patient to decide matters related only to his/her own health. Considering the predominant role of patient wishes, the logical consequence would be the legal recognition of binding advance directives (ADs). However, this is not the case and ADs have not been legislated in Macao. Even though not legally recognised, ADs can still be accepted. This solution might be based on Article 150/2 of the Macanese Criminal Code, which imposes the requirement of presumed consent for cases where a patient cannot express his/her wishes. ADs can also be implemented through doctors’ own practices: their perception of the patients’ current wishes, but also the views of family members. Chinese familism—the idea that the family should decide relevant matters for the individual, including matters in the healthcare domain—is prevalent in Macao and can mean that using ADs in practice is unpredictable. The lack of clarity leads to potential cases of medical liability, frequent violations of the existing law on what is regarded as informed consent and oblivious neglect of patients’ desires.

Police practices substantiate legal abstractions, but frequently the police are influenced by normative frameworks beyond the framework of the civil laws that regulate their work.This chapter examines the interrelationship between Jordan’s tradition of legal pluralism and the hegemonic values that influence different kinds of social order. It also considers how the civil legal system takes account of tribal settlements with respect to the ‘personal right’ accorded to victims, and reviews how the blend of customary, formalised tribal, Islamic and civil legal traditions that co-exist in Jordan shape the field of practice within which the police manage grievances. Frequently exercising discretion, the police treat some of these grievances as crimes, and others as disputes between citizens, reflecting the common reticence of citizens to prosecute cases in the civil courts.

Chapter 4 provides an overview of how early Republican (1912-28) and Nationalist (1928-49) criminal and civil codes changed the focus of parent–child relations. Republican criminal law maintained some parental privileges in an attenuated manner where children’s physical offense against parents was concerned. At the same time, the Republican court and law enforcement reprimanded and punished abusive or irresponsible parents, and occasionally took away minor children from parents who were deemed disqualified based on neighbors' reports. Republican law also removed the label of filial rebellion from children’s accusation of parents, supporting children’s defense of their interests in defiance of parents. The Republican state’s exercise of parens patriae over minors and its endorsement of adult children’s challenge of parental authority indicate a new understanding of children primarily as rights-bearing citizens whose defining relationship was with the state, not with parents.