SINGAPORE JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES
ISSN: 0218-2173 (Print)
ISSN: 3029-1216 (Digital/Websites)
The Singapore Journal of Legal Studies is an open access journal on a CC BY-NC-ND basis. See further: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
Editors: Sandra Annette BOOYSEN National University of Singapore and Christian WITTING National University of Singapore
The Singapore Journal of Legal Studies has been in continuous publication since 1959 when it first appeared as the University of Malaya Law Review. Institutional changes made it necessary for the Journal to be re-named twice, first as the Malaya Law Review and then the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. Together with its predecessor journals (the University of Malaya Law Review and the Malaya Law Review), the Journal is one of the oldest legal journals in the British Commonwealth. As the first and leading legal journal in Singapore, it has witnessed the legal, political and social development of Singapore as it progressed from being a Third World country to a First World country. The Journal has traced the development of common law in Asia, particularly, Singapore and Malaysia. >> Read More
Featured Content
- Article
Great Crypto Crisis: The Prudential Regulation of Systemically Important Crypto Conglomerates
[2024] Sing JLS 1First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-31Since the crypto winter began in early 2022, several market crashes and institutional collapses have ravaged the innovative financial ecosystem. Among global regulators, the major discourse is no longer the full prohibition of crypto-related activities but the protection of traditional financial systems from a “great” crypto crisis capable of disrupting financial stability. However, existing regulatory frameworks lack clarity on major aspects of the crypto ecosystem, especially relating to new associational risks and its potential to drive systemic risks among crypto conglomerates. This article examines the anatomy of recent crypto crashes and highlights the limitations of existing global regulatory developments toward preventing these threats from potentially spreading to traditional financial systems. To these emerging concerns, the article argues for the adoption of an entity-based approach to crypto regulations. Specifically, it proposes the application of adjusted prudential regulations to a new category of systemically important crypto intermediaries (SICIs) like traditional systemic institutions. ...Read more Show less - Article
Loose Ends in Singapore’s Equal Protection Doctrine
[2024] Sing JLS 32First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-20A trilogy of landmark Singapore Court of Appeal decisions has defined the landscape of constitutional equal protection doctrine in Singapore: Lim Meng Suang, Syed Suhail and Tan Seng Kee. While this trio of cases has laid the doctrinal foundation for the constitutional right to equality in Singapore, three loose ends remain for clarification. First, what is the relationship between the legal tests articulated in Syed Suhail and Lim Meng Suang? Second, what is the relationship between both steps in the Syed Suhail test? Third, what is the distinction between the Syed Suhail test and the common law judicial review ground of irrationality? This paper will seek to study how these loose ends may be best tied up through a close analysis of the decisions which the Singapore courts have handed down since the landmark trilogy was decided. ...Read more Show less
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Determining Courts’ Jurisdiction to Sanction Schemes of Arrangement Involving Third Party Releases: A Policy Analysis
[2024] Sing JLS 107First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-19It is often necessary for a company to reach a compromise with its creditors, and where necessary, third parties. A useful tool for facilitating such a compromise is the scheme of arrangement, a court-controlled procedure for restructuring the relationship between the company and its members or creditors. The scheme provisions are, however, silent on whether a third-party release may be incorporated into a scheme. Since the mid 2000s, the Australian and UK courts have developed two different tests, namely the nexus test and the necessity test, to fill this statutory gap. This paper discusses policy concerns, if any, that the alternative tests have given cause to, and if the answer is ‘yes’, how these concerns should be addressed. The paper concludes that the necessity test does, and the nexus test does not, give cause for concern and that the latter should be adopted for determining scheme jurisdiction in all cases. ...Read more Show less - Article
Fair Use in the US Redux: Reformed or Still Deformed?
[2024] Sing JLS 52First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-38In 2019, Professor Ginsburg delivered the Distinguished Visitor in Intellectual Property Lecture at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. Titled “Fair Use in the US: Transformed, Reformed, Deformed?”, the lecture explored US caselaw applying the statutory fair use exception, highlighting its excesses and apparent rebalancing. Four and half years (and a pandemic) later, the Supreme Court has rendered decisions in two fair use cases (Google v Oracle; Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith). Together, these controversies prompt inquiry whether the Supreme Court has redrawn the landscape of US fair use and copyright law, expanding fair use for commercial use of functional computer code, but narrowing it for at least some exploitations of “appropriation art.” That inquiry extends to the fair use doctrine’s potential to accommodate massive inputs of copyrighted works into databases to enable “machine learning” by artificial intelligence systems. ...Read more Show less
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The Future of Tax Jurisdiction
[2024] Sing JLS 126First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-23Tax jurisdiction is a legal concept, but it is fundamentally dependent on state capacity, technology and politics. The jurisdictional boundaries of the tax state are in turn crucial in delimiting its taxing power. This article considers how tax jurisdictional concepts, in particular residence, source and the location of consumption, are changing as the capability of states to tax labour, capital and consumption changes in a global digital economy. These changes are occurring through contestation in the “borderlands” of the tax state, between multiple states and non-state actors. Governments can enhance tax capability by cooperating with each other and with global intermediaries and by adopting new technologies, but also take contradictory steps to abrogate tax jurisdiction. The article illustrates the discussion with examples of tax jurisdiction for individuals as residents, workers, investors or consumers; and for corporations, including recent global developments aimed at taxation of multinational enterprises. ...Read more Show less - Article
The Impact of AI and New Technologies on Corporate Governance and Regulation
[2024] Sing JLS 90First view: [Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-17Artificial intelligence (“AI”) and other new technologies will shape, and are already shaping, the business models, management, structures and boundaries, and governance of corporations. This article examines selected developments in this area and their potential impacts on corporate law, governance, and regulation, using both theoretical and practical perspectives. The first part discusses AI and corporate leadership, focusing in particular on management structures, liability, and autonomous algorithmic entities. The second part proceeds to theorise firms in light of three specific business-related changes or phenomena induced by AI and other technologies. Finally, this part outlines selected impacts that these changes may have on corporate governance and the regulation of AI and online platforms. ...Read more Show less
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