Human Rights Law Commons^™

Insulating The Constitution: Yong Vui Kong V. Public Prosecutor [2010] Sgca 20, Aravind Ganesh

Aravind Ganesh

In May 2010, the Singapore Court of Appeal upheld the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty in Yong Vui Kong v PP. This article does not deal with the propriety of mandatory death penalty laws, or of the death penalty broadly, but instead focuses on two novel pronouncements by the Court of Appeal. First, that customary international law not only has no legal validity in the domestic Singaporean legal sphere, but that it is also not to be treated as automatically incorporated into Singapore common law. Instead, a rule of customary international law can become part of Singapore law only …