Despite the fact that co-ownership is a very popular form of landholding in Singapore, many aspects of the law relating to it remain unsettled. This article explores the question whether the granting of a mortgage or a lease by one joint tenant severs the joint tenancy. It is argued that in deciding this matter the courts should have regard to the fact that modern law provides a simple and effective means of severance. The courts should not therefore be astute to discover new methods of severance and in particular should avoid any forms of severance which can be effected by one party without the knowledge of the other joint tenants.

This paper outlines recent milestones in Malaysia's efforts to raise the standards of corporate governance and directors' duties. Much has been achieved concerning the regulation of listed companies. This can be attributed in lager part to the overhaul of the Listing Requirements of the Burs Malaysia Securities Bhd, which occurred in 2001 as a response to recommendations of the High Level Finance Committee. The next challenge involves the reformulation of core provisions of the Companies Act 1965 regulating directors' duties and related party transactions. This reform task is currently in the hands of the newly constituted Corporate Law Reform Committee.

The Court of Appeal in Syed Suhail v AG (2020) recently clarified in 2020 that the ‘intentional and arbitrary discrimination test’ was an example of how article 12(1), the equality guarantee, could be breached in relation to executive action, but was not itself the threshold test for breach, as it was considered not to accord sufficient protection where fundamental liberties are concerned. A two-limb approach was articulated, to assess the permissibility of differential treatment which first asked whether A and B were similarly situated and if so, whether legitimate reasons exist to justify this. It was underscored that the constitutional test in this respect not be conflated with ordinary administrative law grounds of challenge, such as relevancy or rationality review. This article focuses on two key questions: firstly, whether a distinctively constitutionally based ground for challenging executive action which contravenes article 12(1) has been developed and if not, whether traditional judicial review principles, understood as importing variable degrees of scrutiny depending on the nature of the power and gravity of interest implicated, may provide the degree of ‘searching scrutiny’ required for fundamental rights cases. Secondly, it explores the idea of ‘legitimate legal expectations’ generated by article 12(1), introduced by the court, as distinct from substantive legitimate expectations. It draws on developments in English public law, such as the principle of consistency and ‘most anxious scrutiny’ where rights are concerned, and reflects on how these ideas might add to the normative storehouse of public law governance in Singapore.

The realisation of the almost universally accepted ideal of equality as a legal doctrine is complicated by the fact that differentiation is an inherent part of regulation in the modern state. In Singapore, the courts have regarded the Constitution's injunction for the equal protection of the law to be a relative, rather than an absolute, concept. Differentiating laws therefore only has to satisfy a reasonable classification test in order to pass constitutional muster. This article argues that despite recent judgments elaborating upon the scope and meaning of the equality clause, there remains at least three areas in need of further judicial elucidation. It further argues that the reasonable classification test as it now stands is sufficiently capacious for the courts to read substantive content into the equality provision should a suitable case arise in the future.

Focusing on places of worship in Indonesia, this paper examines whether the right to freedom of religion for religious minorities is protected by recent changes to the law. The paper begins by looking at an Old Decree, which was an attempt by the New Order to control religion and came to be used as justification by radical Islamic groups to close churches. Given a number of key changes in the law since the end of the New Order, this Old Decree became obsolete. The second part of this paper analyses the New Regulation. It does this by charting the debate surrounding the New Regulation, outlining the present framework of the Regulation and then discussing the response of the public since its introduction. The final part reflects on why the New Regulation was passed by the government and suggests options to restore the right to freedom of religion for religious minorities in relation to places of worship.

Malaysia was the only country severely affected by the 1997 Asian economic crisis that declined to adopt an IMF program. This article assesses this decision in terms of principle, and of the outcomes of the unorthodox policies Malaysia implemented. It concludes that Malaysia recovered at least as quickly as any country that implemented IMF policies and gained a number of significant advantages by charting its own course out of the crisis. Saying no to the IMF was right for Malaysia.

This article looks at the so-called "sweat of the brow" controversy in copyright law. While the US Supreme Court has resolved this controversy by explicitly denying copyright protection to the "sweat of the brow" involved in creating a compilation of facts, it is unclear how this matter will be resolved by the English courts. This article reviews the English cases on compilations of facts, examining how far the English courts have gone in their protection of such works under copyright law. This article also examines the implications of the "sweat of the brow" controversy on the protection of compilations of facts in electronic form, ie, computerized databases.