Professor M.B. Hooker

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  CILIS Senior Associate

Professor M.B. Hooker is one of the most experienced analysts of legal systems in Southeast Asia with a research record spanning over 40 years.

Since he began publishing major works on the legal systems of Southeast Asia in the late 1960s, M.B. Hooker has developed the conceptual framework for the study of legal pluralism in the region. Articulated in Legal Pluralism: an Introduction to Colonial and Neo-Colonial Laws (1975) it became (and remains) a set text on the subject. His Concise Legal History of South-East Asia (1978) also remains a basic text (now updated and expanded in his edited Laws of South-East Asia (2 vols) 1986-88) and sits with his Islamic Law in South-East Asia (1884) as the two works which have defined the outline of legal history for Southeast Asia. He has contributed substantial entries to the authoritative Encyclopedia Islam on all aspects of Islamic law in Indonesia and Malaysia and has pioneered courses in these subjects at the University of Kent (Canterbury UK),  The Australian National University and the University of Melbourne.

Hooker has worked extensively on the legal systems of Southeast Asia and is also acknowledged as making seminal contributions to the study of Islamic law (shariah) in Indonesia. Since the early 1990s he has written and contributed to national conferences on the form and position of shariah in the Indonesian state. In 2003, Indonesian Islam: Social Change through Contemporary Fatawa, his in-depth study of the interaction between shariah (as expressed in legal opinions – fatawa) and Muslim society in Indonesia, appeared simultaneously in English and Indonesian. Indonesian reviewers have described it as “ adding to the treasury of the riches of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals through legal reasoning which should be read by all” (Prof Dr Syafii Maarif, General Chair of Muhammadiyah);  “extremely useful for intellectuals, researchers on Islam and Indonesian religious scholars (ulama)” (Prof K.H. Ali Yafie). His latest published book is Indonesian Syariah (2008) which defines the characteristics of a national Indonesian shariah.

He was previously Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and an Adjunct Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, ANU.

He is currently a Senior Associate of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society in the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU.

Photo: Alison Matheson