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Full-Text Articles in Common Law

Section 25(6) Of The Judicature Act 1873: A ‘Procedural’ Approach, Chee Ho Tham Jun 2023

Section 25(6) Of The Judicature Act 1873: A ‘Procedural’ Approach, Chee Ho Tham

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Section 25(6) was re-enacted as section 136(1), replacing the law French ‘chose in action’ with the more Anglo-Saxon ‘thing in action’, together with other minor differences, but to no substantial effect. Largely unchanged, the construct now found in section 136(1) has been part of English law for 150 years. However, understanding what section 136(1) does, and how it does it, remains muddled. On the one hand, given Lord Macnaghten’s pointed observation in William Brandt’s Sons v Dunlop Rubber that, ‘[section 25(6)] does not forbid or destroy equitable assignments or impair their efficacy in the slightest degree’, Smith & Leslie takes …


Microcontextual Considerations In Ouster Clause Analysis: A Comparative Study Of Parallel Trends In The United Kingdom And Singapore, Kenny Chng Nov 2022

Microcontextual Considerations In Ouster Clause Analysis: A Comparative Study Of Parallel Trends In The United Kingdom And Singapore, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The classic legal approach to legislative ouster clauses in the common law was articulated by the House of Lords in Anisminic Ltd. v. Foreign Compensation Commission. However, recent developments in both the United Kingdom and Singapore indicate a judicial desire to shift away from that approach towards a more flexible analysis of an ouster clause’s effect, centered on the rule of law. This article highlights the significance of those parallel developments, especially given the starkly differing constitutional contexts shaping the approach to ouster clauses in the two jurisdictions. Capitalizing on these trends, it proposes a comparative assessment of the materiality …


'Good Administration' And The 'Good': The Normative Foundation For The Protection Of Legitimate Expectations, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng Dec 2021

'Good Administration' And The 'Good': The Normative Foundation For The Protection Of Legitimate Expectations, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An idea that has gained significant traction in both case law and academic commentary as a justification for the protection of legitimate expectations is the concept of ‘good administration’. Going beyond the usual criticisms of the concept’s ambiguity, this article aims to highlight an additional set of difficulties with the invocation of ‘good administration’ as the normative justification for the doctrine. This article’s central argument is that the concept of ‘good’ invoked by the idea of ‘good administration’ inevitably falls to be substantiated by a particular conception of what the ‘good’ requires as a matter of political philosophy. And given …


Shifting Contour Of Data Sharing In Financial Market And Regulatory Responses: The Uk And Australian Models, Han-Wei Liu Jan 2021

Shifting Contour Of Data Sharing In Financial Market And Regulatory Responses: The Uk And Australian Models, Han-Wei Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Starting from Directive 2015/2366 on Payment Services in the Internal Market — known as PSD II in the European Union (EU) — countries across the world have or are contemplating a new framework to govern data sharing among different players in the financial market. “Open Banking,” as this trend is called, requires or encourages — depending on the regulatory models adopted in different jurisdictions — banks to share consumer-permissioned banking data with third parties securely, in a form that facilitates its use. The Open Banking initiatives have diffused from the EU, and the UK, to elsewhere. The current Open Banking …


Two Decades Of Laws And Practice Around Screen Scraping In The Common Law World And Its Open Banking Watershed Moment, Han-Wei Liu Dec 2020

Two Decades Of Laws And Practice Around Screen Scraping In The Common Law World And Its Open Banking Watershed Moment, Han-Wei Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Screen scraping—a technique using an agent to collect, parse, and organize data from the web in an automated manner—has found countless applications over the past two decades. It is now employed everywhere, from targeted advertising, price aggregation, budgeting apps, website preservation, academic research, and journalism, to name a few. However, this tool has raised enormous controversy in the age of big data. This article takes a comparative law approach to explore two sets of analytical issues in three common law jurisdictions, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As the first step, this article maps out the trajectory of …


Finding Common Law Duty Of Care From Statutory Duties: All Within The Anns Framework, Gary Kok Yew Chan May 2016

Finding Common Law Duty Of Care From Statutory Duties: All Within The Anns Framework, Gary Kok Yew Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper examines the relationship between statutory duties and the common law duty of care in the tort of negligence. There are apparently divergent judicial statements on the general approach towards duty of care to be owed by persons under a statutory duty. One central question arises: should the courts treat the common law duty of care as subsisting generally unless it is excluded by the statute or must the plaintiff show that the Parliament intended to confer a private right of action or impose a common law duty? This paper argues that the two approaches may be properly accommodated …


Equity In The Age Of Statutes, Hang Wu Tang Sep 2015

Equity In The Age Of Statutes, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It has been said that we have moved from a legal system dominated by the common law to one where statutes represent the primary source of the law. Where does that leave equitable jurisprudence in the age of statutes? This article examines the tricky interplay between statute law and equity. It is suggested that there are broadly three categories of cases when the court is considering the application of equitable doctrines in the context of a statute. First, the statute may explicitly or implicitly abolish the application of a relevant equitable doctrine. In this case, the relevant equitable doctrine should …


Juggling Centralized Constitutional Review And Eu Primacy In The Domestic Enforcement Of The Charter: A. V. B., Maartje De Visser Sep 2015

Juggling Centralized Constitutional Review And Eu Primacy In The Domestic Enforcement Of The Charter: A. V. B., Maartje De Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Let the letters in the title of the judgment not fool anyone as to the anonymity of the parties involved: the facts that can be gleaned from this and the relevant Austrian judgments (the Kazakhstani plaintiff was alleged to have kidnapped other Kazakhs and lived at various junctures in Austria and Malta) should provide enough information for anyone with rudimentary skills in operating search engines to unearth the sensational beginning and unexpected ending of the protagonist. Such details, unfortunately, belong in a blockbuster movie rather than an academic case note.


Amendments To The Companies Act – Audit Exemption For Small Companies, Pey Woan Lee Aug 2015

Amendments To The Companies Act – Audit Exemption For Small Companies, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The first phase of legislative amendments introduced by the Companies (Amendment) Act 2014 took effect on 1 July 2015. Of these amendments, the most significant is arguably the introduction of the “small company”, which replaces the exempt private company for purposes of audit exemption. This article considers the features of this new regime and illustrates its application to existing as well as new companies.


Identifying An Interest In Land Sufficient To Support A Caveat: Salbiah Bte Adnan V Micro Credit Pte Ltd [2014] Sghc 249, Alvin W. L. See Jan 2015

Identifying An Interest In Land Sufficient To Support A Caveat: Salbiah Bte Adnan V Micro Credit Pte Ltd [2014] Sghc 249, Alvin W. L. See

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The difficult issue of what constitutes an interest in land sufficient to support a caveat (“caveatable interest”) recently presented itself before the High Court in the case of Salbiah Bte Adnan v Micro Credit Pte Ltd, which concerned a caveat lodged to protect an alleged security interest. The decision deserves the attention of property lawyers for it helpfully addressed various principles of property law relating, directly and indirectly, to the lodgment of caveats.


Measuring The Transplantation Of English Commercial Law In A Small Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study Of Singapore’S Insurance Judgments Between 1965 And 2012, Christopher Chen Jan 2014

Measuring The Transplantation Of English Commercial Law In A Small Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study Of Singapore’S Insurance Judgments Between 1965 And 2012, Christopher Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article seeks to measure the development of law after transplanting common law and statutes from another country by conducting an empirical study of the citation of precedents and demography of disputes of insurance cases in Singapore. This article recognizes that there are justifications for Singapore to transplant English insurance law. However, this research shows that the transplantation of English commercial law into a small jurisdiction, even within the common law family, may cause the law to be in a static state if courts do not have enough cases to maintain the development of law or to consider new development …


Comparative Theory, Judges And Legal Transplants: A Practical Lesson From Singapore And Its Relevance To Transnational Convergence, Basil C. Bitas Jan 2014

Comparative Theory, Judges And Legal Transplants: A Practical Lesson From Singapore And Its Relevance To Transnational Convergence, Basil C. Bitas

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Legal evolution in a hyper-connected world will increasingly come through, or otherwise be informed by, legal borrowing and transplants from without whether in the form of laws, techniques, concepts or simple inspiration. The pressures of globalisation and the resulting need for some form of operational, transnational convergence and harmonisation will require diverse legal systems to seek out the best rules and approaches regardless of provenance to address the demands of the modern legal and commercial environment. Judges, particularly in common law jurisdictions, will be at the forefront of this process of transnational legal selection fraught with both promise and peril. …


Rubin And New Cap: Foreign Judgments And Insolvency, University Of Oxford; Visiting Faculty, Singapore Management University Apr 2013

Rubin And New Cap: Foreign Judgments And Insolvency, University Of Oxford; Visiting Faculty, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The decisions of the UK Supreme Court in 2012 in Rubin and New Cap, and of the Singapore High Court in 2013 in Beluga Chartering, raise in acute form the question of how far the common law of international insolvency and of the recognition of foreign judgments can go when a local court is asked by a court in another country to render particular forms of assistance in relation to an insolvency administration which is taking place there. It asks how the instinct to give assistance for the ultimate benefit of creditors needs to be balanced by the …


Presidential Pardon In Singapore: A Comment On Yong Vui Kong V Ag, Shubhankar Dam Mar 2013

Presidential Pardon In Singapore: A Comment On Yong Vui Kong V Ag, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper critically analyses the decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal in Yong Vui Kong v Attorney-General in relation to presidential pardon. Two questions were central to the case. First, is the President bound by the decision of the Cabinet in pardon-related matters? Secondly, are decisions regarding pardon—whether made by the Cabinet or President—subject to judicial review? In relation to the first question, the Court based its reasoning on Singapore's political system being a Westminster-inspired model and, therefore, that the President generally undertakes the same functions as the British monarch. However, this paper identifies the unique features of Singapore's …


License To Share: The Ugly Side Of Creative Capitalism And The Irony Of The Commons, Warren B. Chik Jul 2007

License To Share: The Ugly Side Of Creative Capitalism And The Irony Of The Commons, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the real world, capitalism has largely influenced the development of the copyright regime as it exists today. However, the emergence of a cyberspace society requires us to revisit communitarian values in the light of the unique features of virtual interaction and the changing expectations and attitudes towards the control and use of creative works. As copyright legal and technological protections continue to expand, private initiatives through creative licensing provide some relief to their restrictions.


Natural Obligations And The Common Law Of Unjust Enrichment, Hang Wu Tang Nov 2006

Natural Obligations And The Common Law Of Unjust Enrichment, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Two leading restitution scholars have recently argued that the notion of natural obligations is now an important defence in the law of unjust enrichment. 'In particular, the late Professor Peter Birks asserts, in his last book, that 'the claimant cannot say that the money was not due if, behind the technicalities of the law, there was still a moral obligation to pay.' This development is interesting because the concept of natural obligations is traditionally thought to be a civilian and not a common law concept. Birks' assertion represents an attempt to use the study of comparative law to interpret the …


The Common Law Choice Of Law Rules For Resulting And Constructive Trusts, Adeline Chong Jan 2005

The Common Law Choice Of Law Rules For Resulting And Constructive Trusts, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

There is a dearth of authority and in-depth discussion concerning what the choice of law rules are for claims involving the assertion that property is held on a resulting or constructive trust. It is usually thought that the choice of law rules set out by the Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Trusts and on their Recognition (hereafter the ‘Hague Trusts Convention’), as enacted into English law by the Recognition of Trusts Act 1987, apply. However, it is arguable that this is not so for some types of resulting and constructive trusts, namely those governed by a foreign law; …


Frustration In English Law – A Reappraisal, Andrew B.L. Phang Jan 1992

Frustration In English Law – A Reappraisal, Andrew B.L. Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

There are few doctrines in the English common law of contract that have raised as much theoretical discussion as the doctrine of frustration. The present article attempts a reappraisal of the doctrine, its central thesis being that many of the major controversies centring on the doctrine have been unnecessary as they stem from an omission to view the doctrine in a holistic fashion. Indeed, it is submitted that a more coherent view must proceed from a theoretical reappraisal, which reappraisal would, ironically, lead to a more cogent practical application of the doctrine itself. That theory lies at the core of …


Common Mistake In English Law: The Proposed Merger Of Common Law And Equity, Andrew B.L. Phang Jan 1989

Common Mistake In English Law: The Proposed Merger Of Common Law And Equity, Andrew B.L. Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Although the law relating to common mistake’ has engendered a plethora of conundrums, many problem areas have in fact been well-traversed in the literature.‘ The present article does not seek to re-cover such welltrodden ground, but attempts, instead, to suggest a different and more systematic approach that would effect a merger of the common law and equitable3 branches of common mistake into one coherent, doctrine.