In August 2025, two research centres from the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore – the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law (“TRAIL”) and the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business – partnered with research centres from Columbia, Oxford and Tsinghua to co‑organise a truly transnational two‑day conference marking the first‑ever academic collaboration of its kind across these leading global institutions. Titled “Intellectual Property and Technology in the 21st Century: Challenges in the Next Decade”, the conference discussed how intellectual property (“IP”) laws can better deal with disruptive technology trends. The conference was also supported by partners such as Google, ByteDance, the Singapore Academy of Law and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (“IPOS”).

Fundamentals of Criminal Law (“Fundamentals”) was completed in Singapore during lockdown in 2020. But it will never really be finished. The project that it undertakes is sufficiently wide-ranging that there will always be opportunities for disagreement and refinement. Even if one accepts its core informing principles, eg that D should not be convicted of a criminal wrong unless D is culpable for that wrong, one might well harbour doubts about how those principles apply in the context of particular doctrines. Can inadvertent negligence be culpable, for instance, in the way that many legal systems assume it is? In his essay for this symposium, James Manwaring does not deny that it can: “Sometimes inattention and forgetfulness evidence insufficient care for others.” But he denies that the evidential link is a robust one. Drawing on recent studies in the psychological literature, he concludes that such failings of attention or memory, relative to an average person, do not supply robust evidence of a moral failing on D’s part. More specifically, they do not offer sufficiently reliable evidence of D’s culpability to warrant the kind of condemnatory and punitive response that is inflicted by criminal law. “From the fact that the defendant failed to do what the reasonable person would do, it requires a fragile inference to reach the conclusion that they evinced insufficient care [for the interests of those they harmed].” Yet Manwaring accepts that the inference may be strengthened by relativising the so-called “reasonable person” to more of the defendant’s own attributes. He does not offer an account of how that might be done; such an account would be well beyond the scope of a single essay. What he does show, however, is that the existing literature is incomplete. There is more work to be done.

Since 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.

One of the biggest lessons I learnt in law school was that the law never happens in a vacuum, and in these times of geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, societal stress and technological acceleration, context matters more than ever. Therefore, I hope in this keynote to provide some context to the discussions that will take place over the next two days.

In Fundamentals of Criminal Law, Andrew Simester offers a limited defence of the use of negligence in criminal law. Simester does not claim that negligence – nor any mens rea element – is inherently culpable. Rather, Simester claims that negligence – with all other mens rea elements – provides evidence from which we may infer culpability. I will retrace Simester’s account to consider how (and why) we may infer culpability from mens rea in general (Part 1), then how we may infer culpability from negligence specifically (Part 2), and finally, how we may infer culpability from the underlying traits which cause us to become negligent (Part 3). Ultimately, I think that the evidence of culpability to be derived from negligence is too weak to meet Simester’s requirements.

This Article argues that the United States’ fragmented approach to generative AI regulation is a strategic strength rather than a flaw. In place of a single federal regime, privacy law, the right of publicity, and copyright offer overlapping tools to address identity-linked harms, each grounded in distinct theories of harm and institutional traditions. This pluralism promotes experimentation, learning, and well-reasoned development rather than confusion. Heterogeneous governance helps courts and lawmakers adapt incrementally to fast-moving technologies, avoid premature lock-in, and coordinate protections across legal silos. To build on these advantages, the Article proposes a narrowly tailored data right focused on high-fidelity, identity-linked uses of data. Functioning as an opt-in, transparency-driven supplement to existing doctrines, this right would close gaps while preserving innovation and doctrinal diversity. The result is a principled, pragmatic approach that safeguards individual agency and leverages the adaptive strengths of US federalism.

The article suggests a way to overcome the reluctance to grant a defence for culturally motivated non-compliance with the criminal law by recognising various kinds of cultural defences. Cultural defence as an excuse enables courts to both declare the expectation that the minority will adjust their practices to criminal law prohibitions by perceiving the culturally motivated non-compliance as wrong, and nonetheless excuse the defendant on the ground that the cultural motivation negates her culpability. Cultural defence as a justification conveys a respect for cultural autonomy by permitting the defendant to adhere to cultural practices despite its infringement of the criminal law prohibition. Classifying the cultural motivation as an offence modifier implies that the reasons for criminalisation do not apply to the cultural practice. The variety of cultural defences would have to be subject to a normative constraint for cases in which the cultural practice infringes upon the polity’s fundamental values.

A 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.

This paper engages with fundamental questions about the categorisation of the insanity defence in relation to other defences and about the moral and legal significance of satisfying its requirements. Firstly, it defends Simester’s account of insanity as an exemption from moral assessment against Marcia Baron’s argument that insanity is really an excuse. Secondly, it argues that we must distinguish conceptually between cases of insanity based on involuntariness, and cases of insanity where the defendant’s conduct was not involuntary. It tentatively suggests that certain defendants who, under Singapore’s revised insanity defence, successfully plead that they have no “power to control” their actions, should be treated as failing to satisfy the criminal law’s underlying voluntariness requirement.

The advent of sophisticated AI-driven voice cloning has brought to the fore critical legal and ethical challenges regarding the protection of vocal identity. Prompted by recent controversies – including the striking resemblance between OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o voice and that of Scarlett Johansson – this article examines how generative AI technologies undermine the unique value of the human voice and further complicate the legal questions surrounding personal identity. Through a comparative analysis, the paper evaluates three principal legal frameworks: the right of publicity, personality rights, and the personal data protection right. Each framework – rooted in different legal traditions – offers distinct strengths and limitations in addressing the threats posed by AI-generated voice cloning. By analysing these doctrines’ scope, remedies, and posthumous protections, the study offers a foundation for understanding how existing legal approaches may be applied to the evolving challenges of vocal identity in the era of generative AI.