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Singapore Management University

2023

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Criminal Law In Myanmar, Wing Cheong Chan, Mark Mcbride, Neil: Yeo Morgan Dec 2023

Criminal Law In Myanmar, Wing Cheong Chan, Mark Mcbride, Neil: Yeo Morgan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A commentary on the Myanmar Penal Code that describes and critically evaluates the general principles of criminal responsibility contained in the Code.This book was originally published in English in 2016. It was republished in Burmese in 2023.


"Takings" And "Givings" In Singapore: Land Law And Policy In The Search For Justice, Rachel Phang Dec 2023

"Takings" And "Givings" In Singapore: Land Law And Policy In The Search For Justice, Rachel Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the United States and globally, cities are increasingly plagued by deepening housing crisis and widening economic inequality. In the face of these crises, this Article focuses on the potentially powerful role for land law and policy in the search for justice. Specifically, it does so by reference to two unusual yet illuminating choices of theory and application: the case study of Singapore, and the school of thought of Georgism, both of which accord inordinate and paramount importance to land. Singapore’s land law and policy have been characterized by extensive takings and givings of land. In consequence, the State owns …


China’S Changing Perspective On The Wto: From Aspiration, Assimilation To Alienation, Henry S. Gao Dec 2023

China’S Changing Perspective On The Wto: From Aspiration, Assimilation To Alienation, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Since its accession to the WTO twenty years ago, China’s image has shifted from a good student aspiring to assimilate itself into the multilateral trading system to one that is increasingly alienated from key WTO principles. How has China’s perspective on WTO been evolving? What are the reasons behind China’s changing perspective? This chapter addresses these questions from the Chinese perspective with a comprehensive analysis of the key moments in China’s first two decades in the WTO, followed by practical suggestions on how to engage China more constructively in the WTO and beyond.


Distinguishing The Fair Use And Fair Dealing Doctrines In Copyright Law—Much Ado About Nothing?, Cheng Lim Saw Dec 2023

Distinguishing The Fair Use And Fair Dealing Doctrines In Copyright Law—Much Ado About Nothing?, Cheng Lim Saw

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It is often assumed and taken for granted that there is a gulf separating the fair use and fair dealing doctrines in copyright law arising principally from the ‘open v closed’ distinction that is made of the statutory schemes in the respective fair use and fair dealing jurisdictions.It will be argued in this article, after a comparative and comprehensive study of the case law and of the various (overlapping) fairness factors, that this distinction merely reflects a difference as to legislative form, rather than the substance of the fairness analysis that may ultimately bear on the outcome of a fairness …


Deontics And Time In Contracts: An Executable Semantics For The L4 Dsl, Seng Joe Watt, Oliver Goodenough, Meng Weng (Huang Mingrong) Wong Dec 2023

Deontics And Time In Contracts: An Executable Semantics For The L4 Dsl, Seng Joe Watt, Oliver Goodenough, Meng Weng (Huang Mingrong) Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Existing approaches to modelling contracts often rely on deontic logic to reason about norms, and only treat time qualitatively. Using L4, a textual domain specific language (DSL) for the law, we offer a more operational interpretation of norms, based on states and transitions, that also accounts for the granular timing of events. In this paper, we present a higher-level rendering of the loan agreement from Flood & Goodenough in L4, and an accompanying operational semantics amenable to execution and static analysis. We also implement this semantics in Maude and show how this lets us visualize the execution of the loan …


Corporate Purpose Beyond Borders: A Key To Saving Our Planet Or Colonialism Repackaged?, Roza Nurgozhayeva, Dan W. Puchniak Dec 2023

Corporate Purpose Beyond Borders: A Key To Saving Our Planet Or Colonialism Repackaged?, Roza Nurgozhayeva, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The “corporate purpose” debate, while extremely important, has largely been built on an understanding of corporate law and governance that is local – jurisdiction bound – while the issue of climate change is global; pollution does not respect jurisdictional borders. Despite this, in practice, states, multinational corporations, and transnational organizations are increasingly using formal and informal mechanisms to shape sustainable corporate governance beyond jurisdictional borders – a colossal development that has been hiding in plain sight.This article develops a taxonomy for identifying and analyzing the forces driving corporate purpose beyond borders: state-based, firm-based, and organization-based “global corporate law and governance”. …


Hague Service Convention Enters Into Force In Singapore, Adeline Chong Dec 2023

Hague Service Convention Enters Into Force In Singapore, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore acceded to the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (‘Service Convention’) on 16 May 2023. It has now entered into force in Singapore on 1 December 2023. Two declarations were lodged: first, against Article 8(1) objecting to the direct service of judicial documents upon persons in Singapore through foreign diplomatic or consular agents unless the documents are to be served upon a national of the State from which the documents originate; and secondly, objecting to service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in Singapore by the methods of transmission set …


Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta Dec 2023

Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do illegal insiders internalize legal risk? We address this question with hand-collected data from 530 SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) investigations. Using two plausibly exogenous shocks to expected penalties, we show that insiders trade less aggressively and earlier and concentrate on tips of greater value when facing a higher risk. The results match the predictions of a model where an insider internalizes the impact of trades on prices and the likelihood of prosecution and anticipates penalties in proportion to trade profits. Our findings lend support to the effectiveness of U.S. regulations' deterrence and the long-standing hypothesis that insider …


An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le Nov 2023

An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we experiment an idealistic approach for smart contract correctness verification and enforcement, based on the assumption that developers are either desired or required to provide a correctness specification due to the importance of smart contracts and the fact that they are immutable after deployment. We design a static verification system with a specification language which supports fully compositional verification (with the help of function specifications, contract invariants, loop invariants and call invariants). Our approach has been implemented in a tool named iContract which automatically proves the correctness of a smart contract statically or checks the unverified part …


The Relationship Between Constitutional Equality And Substantive Review, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng Nov 2023

The Relationship Between Constitutional Equality And Substantive Review, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

General equality rights in written constitutions – rights stating the ideal of equality without specifying categories of impermissible differentiation – have often been effected through the idea of equality as rationality. Equality as rationality demands that differentiations between like entities have to be rationally justifiable. Such equality rights are applicable to legislation and executive action. This presents a prima facie overlap with substantive review in common law administrative law, since substantive review is also concerned about the rational justifiability of executive action. This raises three questions: (1) Are both sets of legal principles indeed similar? (2) Have courts managed to …


Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications For Eyewitness Testimony, Charles C. F. Or, Denise Y. Lim, Siyuan Chen, Alan L. F. Lee Oct 2023

Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications For Eyewitness Testimony, Charles C. F. Or, Denise Y. Lim, Siyuan Chen, Alan L. F. Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Eyewitness testimony forms an important component in deciding whether a case can be prosecuted. Yet, many criminal perpetrators deliberately conceal their faces with disguises or under dim lighting, undermining eyewitness accuracy. This article reviews recent studies to characterize the factors that impair face recognition performance, specifically, various forms of face disguise (e.g., face masks, sunglasses) and different lighting conditions. Research shows that identification accuracy, alongside eyewitness confidence and decision bias, all affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. A consistent finding across studies is that face-identification accuracy can be improved by matching the viewing conditions during the police lineup with those …


Unpacking Constitutional Literacy, De Maartje Visser, Brian Christopher Jones Oct 2023

Unpacking Constitutional Literacy, De Maartje Visser, Brian Christopher Jones

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The contemporary crisis in relation to constitutional literacy relates not to the lack of knowledge that citizens possess about fundamental constitutional texts, but to the considerable lack of development in relation to what constitutional literacy itself entails. This article accordingly unpacks the notion of constitutional literacy: its importance, its characteristics, its variable nature, and its potential downsides. Using a comparative lens, the article invites reflection on the role that we expect citizens to play in our democracies, and especially the associated knowledge and skills required for successful state performance. We suggest that constitutional literacy is exceptionally multifaceted and fluid in …


Foreword, Vincent Ooi Oct 2023

Foreword, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Family law goes beyond divorce cases, often requiring the family law practitioner to advise and assist on matters involving children and young persons, and protection orders. These can be some of the most challenging issues which a person can face and it is not always obvious to someone needing help that they can turn to the law for assistance in appropriate cases. This makes books like this one crucial in spreading the word that help is available, preventing a situation where people facing difficulties might have to suffer in silence.Fung Peen’s first two books on Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs) …


Impartiality And The Construction Of Trust In Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Stavros Brekoulakis, Anna Howard Oct 2023

Impartiality And The Construction Of Trust In Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Stavros Brekoulakis, Anna Howard

Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy

This article analyses impartiality in investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) by identifying the way that the parties’ trust in arbitrators is constructed. Drawing on the findings of a large-scale empirical project, it questions the applicability of an orthodox judicial doctrine of impartiality to ISDS on the grounds that trust in arbitrators is constructed on a fundamentally different basis from that of trust in judges. The primary feature of a judicial doctrine of impartiality is that trust is founded on an absolutist approach to impartiality which is intended to ensure that judges have no predispositions to parties. In contrast, trust in ISDS …


A Review Of The 2022/23 International Moots Season, Siyuan Chen Oct 2023

A Review Of The 2022/23 International Moots Season, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is the ninth annual review of Singapore’s performance in international moot court competitions. The preceding season (2021/22) had set a high bar, considering that Singapore law schools took the top two spots in the NICA Law School Rankings. The NICA rankings are based on how law schools throughout the world perform in various international moots, with points weighted according to the scale of the competition. With six championships (including two Grand Slams) as well as a third championship final appearance in the Jessup, SMU took top spot in the NICA rankings for the second time in its history.


Toolkit For The Evaluation Of Crypto Tax Risks (Outline), Vincent Ooi Oct 2023

Toolkit For The Evaluation Of Crypto Tax Risks (Outline), Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Toolkit seeks to provide a practical, structured framework for the identification and assessment of crypto tax risks that can be used by tax administrations. It has three main parts. Firstly, an introduction to the Toolkit and how it should be used. Secondly, a series of questionnaires to complete. Thirdly, a commentary to provide additional context and details on each part of the Toolkit and its application. As tax administrations go through the questionnaires, they can rely on the Commentary to complement their existing knowledge and expertise to accurately identify the crypto tax risks facing their domestic tax systems.


Examining The New Standard Of Care For Medical Advice And Patients With Mental Health Conditions, Gary Kok Yew Chan Oct 2023

Examining The New Standard Of Care For Medical Advice And Patients With Mental Health Conditions, Gary Kok Yew Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In 2017, the Singapore Court of Appeal in Hii Chii Kok v Oii Peng Jin London Lucien (Hii Chii Kok) favoured a patient-centric approach towards issues of providing medical advice. Section 37 of the Singapore Civil Law Act, which took effect on 1 July 2022, stipulates that the standard of care in giving medical advice to patients is based on peer professional opinion. This article will analyse, with reference to other common law jurisdictions, how the new statutory provision applies to patients with mental disorders under the Singapore Mental Capacity Act 2008. It will provide an interpretation of s 37 …


How To Understand China's Approach To Central Bank Digital Currency?, Heng Wang Sep 2023

How To Understand China's Approach To Central Bank Digital Currency?, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

China's central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital yuan or e-CNY, is likely to profoundly affect the international financial system. China's CBDC is fast evolving. Understanding the influencing factors of China's CBDC will likely be crucial to explore its future direction. Major influencing factors include (i) China's perception and conception of regulation and technology, (ii) complementarity between China's preferences and CBDC development, (iii) domestic and international legitimacy, and (iv) institutional development. This paper argues that these influencing factors contribute to China's likely approach of selectively reshaping the international financial system. Given the potential wide-ranging implications of the introduction of CBDC globally, …


Reconsidering The Imposition Of Dual Vicarious Liability In The Borrowed Employee Context: The Singapore Approach In Munshi Mohammad Faiz V Interpro Construction Pte Ltd [2021] 4 Slr 1371 And Hwa Aik Engineering Pte Ltd V Munshi Mohammad [2021] 1 Slr 1288, Danny Ong, Aaron Yoong, Louis Yi Hang Lau Sep 2023

Reconsidering The Imposition Of Dual Vicarious Liability In The Borrowed Employee Context: The Singapore Approach In Munshi Mohammad Faiz V Interpro Construction Pte Ltd [2021] 4 Slr 1371 And Hwa Aik Engineering Pte Ltd V Munshi Mohammad [2021] 1 Slr 1288, Danny Ong, Aaron Yoong, Louis Yi Hang Lau

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The limits of the law on dual vicarious liability were recently tested in the decisions of Munshi Mohammad Faiz v Interpro Construction Pte Ltd [2021] 4 SLR 1371 and Hwa Aik Engineering Pte Ltd v Munshi Mohammad [2021] 1 SLR 1288, both before the General and Appellate divisions of the High Court. Against the backdrop of these decisions, this case note argues that the approach laid down by the High Court may go some ways in resolving the tension and assist in settling the perennial question of the role of control in dual vicarious liability. In particular, it is argued …


Effect Of Amended Claim On A Warrant Of Arrest In An Admiralty Action In Rem, Ming En Tor Sep 2023

Effect Of Amended Claim On A Warrant Of Arrest In An Admiralty Action In Rem, Ming En Tor

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Suppose I have filed my statement of claim endorsing the writ in rem, and the Registrar has issued a warrant of arrest reflecting this claim. I then proceed to execute a warrant of arrest to arrest a vessel. Now, suppose, however, I later discover that the original claim stated in the warrant of arrest does not exist. I then substitute the original claim with a completely different claim altogether. Can the warrant of arrest be upheld based on the amended claim and/or cause of action, even if it was not so pleaded initially when the action in rem commenced? This …


Rethinking Acting In Concert: Activist Esg Stewardship Is Shareholder Democracy, Dan W. Puchniak, Umakanth Varottil Sep 2023

Rethinking Acting In Concert: Activist Esg Stewardship Is Shareholder Democracy, Dan W. Puchniak, Umakanth Varottil

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In May 2021, Engine No. 1, an investment fund, was lauded by the responsible investment community for successfully placing three dissident independent directors on ExxonMobil’s board. It achieved this by being a catalyst for institutional investors to become backers of environmental shareholder activism. The unprecedented success of Engine No. 1’s campaign has spurred calls for a new, more sustained, activist engagement model by institutional investors, now known as “activist stewardship”.However, there is a significant legal hurdle that has been almost entirely overlooked by those calling for this new approach for institutional investors to become activist stewards: acting in concert rules. …


Deontic Meta-Rules, Francesco Olivieri, Guido Governatori, Matteo Cristani, Antonino Rotolo, Abdul Sattar Sep 2023

Deontic Meta-Rules, Francesco Olivieri, Guido Governatori, Matteo Cristani, Antonino Rotolo, Abdul Sattar

Centre for Computational Law

The use of meta-rules in logic, i.e., rules whose content includes other rules, has recently gained attention in the setting of non-monotonic reasoning: a first logical formalisation and efficient algorithms to compute the (meta)-extensions of such theories were proposed in Olivieri et al. (2021, Computing defeasible meta-logic. In JELIA 2021, LNCS, vol. 12678, pp. 69-84. Springer.). This work extends such a logical framework by considering the deontic aspect. The resulting logic will not just be able to model policies but also tackle well-known aspects that occur in numerous legal systems. The use of Defeasible Logic to model meta-rules in the …


Escape From The Hangman's Noose? Singapore's Discretionary Death Penalty For Drug Traffickers, Wing Cheong Chan Sep 2023

Escape From The Hangman's Noose? Singapore's Discretionary Death Penalty For Drug Traffickers, Wing Cheong Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

After nearly fifty years of the mandatory death penalty for drug offences, Singapore amended its law in 2012 to give judges a choice in certain situations to impose a sentence of death or life imprisonment instead. However, this change should not be misunderstood as an alteration in Singapore’s zero-tolerance approach towards illegal drugs. Escaping the mandatory death penalty regime under the new law requires fulfilment of strict conditions. This article reviews the exceptional circumstances that are required before judges are given the discretion to impose the death penalty or not and the application of the new law by the Singapore …


A Non-Contractual Approach To Smart Contracts, Florian Gamper Sep 2023

A Non-Contractual Approach To Smart Contracts, Florian Gamper

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article adds to the debate on what, legally speaking, smart contracts are and what they should be. Currently, much of this debate focuses on the relationship between smart contracts and legal contracts, overlooking that other legal categories may also be appropriate. This article suggests that the concept of abandonment can be fruitfully applied to smart contracts. Using the concept of abandonment has the advantage of allowing smart contracts, as close as legally possible, to be utilized as machines (or using the terminology suggested by Vitalik Buterin, founder of Etherium, as a ‘persistent script’). It would also make other issues, …


The United States Vs. China: The Quest For Global Economic Leadership By C. Fred Bergsten, Henry S. Gao Aug 2023

The United States Vs. China: The Quest For Global Economic Leadership By C. Fred Bergsten, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This book is one of the latest additions to the voluminous literature exploring two of the biggest geopolitical trends in our age: the rise of China and its changing relationship with the United States. However, two features make this book unique. First is its scope: it is one of a few that specifically focus on the systemic implications to the global economic order arising from the tensions between the two largest economies in the world. Second, its author, C. Fred Bergsten, is one of the most qualified in the world to write on the topic. Bergsten not only is one …


Competition Among Purposes: The Chinese Experience In The Governance Of Climate Change And Energy Transition, Henry S. Gao, Weihuan Zhou Aug 2023

Competition Among Purposes: The Chinese Experience In The Governance Of Climate Change And Energy Transition, Henry S. Gao, Weihuan Zhou

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Energy governance at the international level is fraught with difficulties due to the 'competition among purposes' between different bodies of international law. In this paper, we extend this thesis to argue that the same tension may be found in domestic energy governance. Drawing from China's experience in the governance of climate change and energy transition, we analyse how the misalignment of incentives between different actors and the incomplete market reform led to a drastic shift in policy in 2021. We also compare the different approaches in China's energy governance and trade governance and draw some general lessons on how developing …


Asia’S Moment: Contextualizing The Rules Of The Corporate Governance Game, Dan W. Puchniak Aug 2023

Asia’S Moment: Contextualizing The Rules Of The Corporate Governance Game, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Whether this century is Asia’s century is still open for debate. What is clear now, however, is that understanding corporate governance in Asia is a paramount issue of global importance. Asia is forecast to account for an astonishing 70% of global growth in 2023.


An Asian Solution For The World’S Environment? Corporate Governance In A Non-Anglo-American World, Dan W. Puchniak Aug 2023

An Asian Solution For The World’S Environment? Corporate Governance In A Non-Anglo-American World, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Historically, when it comes to determining what counts as “good” corporate governance globally, the United Kingdom and United States have set the rules of the game. This has resulted in ill-fitting Anglo-American corporate governance solutions being transplanted to Asia with unforeseen consequences.[i] Will Asia repeat this history by adopting Anglo-American corporate governance solutions to solve its environmental problems?


Testing Automated Driving Systems By Breaking Many Laws Efficiently, Xiaodong Zhang, Wei Zhao, Yang Sun, Jun Sun, Yulong Shen, Xuewen Dong, Zijiang Yang Jul 2023

Testing Automated Driving Systems By Breaking Many Laws Efficiently, Xiaodong Zhang, Wei Zhao, Yang Sun, Jun Sun, Yulong Shen, Xuewen Dong, Zijiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An automated driving system (ADS), as the brain of an autonomous vehicle (AV), should be tested thoroughly ahead of deployment. ADS must satisfy a complex set of rules to ensure road safety, e.g., the existing traffic laws and possibly future laws that are dedicated to AVs. To comprehensively test an ADS, we would like to systematically discover diverse scenarios in which certain traffic law is violated. The challenge is that (1) there are many traffic laws (e.g., 13 testable articles in Chinese traffic laws and 16 testable articles in Singapore traffic laws, with 81 and 43 violation situations respectively); and …


Conceptualizing Condominium Law And Children: Comparing The State Of Strata Titles Law In New South Wales And Singapore, Hang Wu Tang Jul 2023

Conceptualizing Condominium Law And Children: Comparing The State Of Strata Titles Law In New South Wales And Singapore, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Purpose: This article conceptualises the legal relations embedded within condominium housing and the various theories of property ownership to ascertain how children’s interest fit within this framework. The laws of two jurisdictions, New South Wales and Singapore are examined to determine how their strata law responds when children’s safety is at stake. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative method using case law, statutes and secondary literature across both jurisdictions is adopted. This article also draws on various theories of property ownership. Findings: Drawing on pluralist moral theories of property law, the thesis advanced is that children’s issues within condominiums should not be subject …