Abstract: "In 2012, the Government of Myanmar (GoM) passed the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow, Virgin (VFV) Land Law—creating a formalized land market. In essence, this created a formalized land market. Land titling is often considered ?the natural end point of land rights formalization” (Hall et al. 2010: 35). This thinking has become dominant among most governments and development agencies ever since De Soto (2000) popularized it in The Mystery of Capital , in which he argued that the developmental successes of the West has relied on a strong legally-enforceable institution of property rights, without which assets, particularly land, would become ?dead capital.” In reality, there are at least two major obstacles in achieving this in Myanmar. The first is around the legacy of multiple regimes in creating ?stacked laws” (Roquas 2002). This term refers to a situation in which a country has multiple layers of laws that exist simultaneously, creating conflicts and contradictions in the legal system, as well as challenges to creating a well-regulated land market envisioned by the Myanmar state with the passage of the two land laws. The second obstacle has to do with the fact that like many countries in the world, access to legal justice in Myanmar is dependent on one?s access to different material, social and political resources—directly to a history of patron-clientelism. Through a number of select case studies, this paper seeks to provide preliminary reflections on the following question: In Myanmar, a country with a porous legal framework, how do smallholder farmers engage with the law, and where relevant, informal norms to strengthen legitimacy of their claims to land against confiscations? This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on agrarian rural movements by focusing specifically on the way farming communities in Myanmar engage with the law, while paying attention to the complications they face when they engage with legal institutions that are porous and ?stacked?—a phenomena that is common to many countries in the early phases of rural democratization...... Keywords: stacked laws, patron-client relationships, legal justice, legal engagement"