The new edition of this text has been highly anticipated. In his Foreword, the Chief Justice of Singapore Chan Sek Keong notes that eight years after the second edition, this third edition is called for because of what the editors have described as “the breathtaking pace of the development of Singapore land jurisprudence”. In her Preface, Professor Tan Sook Yee also agrees that it was very clear that a third edition was becoming long overdue.

I first encountered Andrew Harding's work as a young law student when I became_x000D_ fascinated with Malaysian constitutional law. Harding's exegeses on public law and_x000D_ Islam (e.g., Andrew Harding, "Islam and Public Law in Malaysia: Some Reflections_x000D_ in the Aftermath of Susie Teoh's Case" (1991) 1 M.L.J. xci, and Andrew Harding,_x000D_ "The Keris, the Crescent and the Blind Goddess: The State, Islam and the Constitution_x000D_ in Malaysia" (2002) 6 Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law 154) shaped my early understanding of Malaysian constitutional law, state and religion. His Geertzian approach to law draws out the complexity and anomalies of the pluralistic, post-colonial, and democratising Malaysian state. This perceptive local knowledge pervades his latest book, The Constitution of Malaysia: A Contextual Analysis, where he surveys the past, scrutinises the present, and meditates on the future of Malaysian constitutional law. It is part of the Constitutional Systems of theWorld series, which provides a comprehensive range of introductory texts on the various constitutions in the world.