Singapore and Hong Kong share a common legal heritage in income taxation. Given the spectacular economic growth enjoyed by both, it is instructive to analyse how the common inheritance and values have produced very different taxation systems in both states. This article commences with a brief historical account of the development of those systems, and the role the common law has played in shaping them. It then attempts to identify the unique imperatives that are absent in other areas of law to account for the diversions in the two systems of taxation. That is followed by an analysis of how both systems meet the challenge of maintaining a viable tax base without compromising the ease of compliance and the rights of taxpayers. It concludes with observations on how both taxation systems are poised to meet the challenges posed by the economic conditions prevalent in the 21st century, and to articulate the role the common law will play in that context.

This article traces the enactment of the Women's Charter in 1961 to the goal of national construction pursued by the People's Action Party upon winning the 1959 General Elections. The statute introduced a unitary monogamous law for non-Muslim Singaporeans and, by legislating the equality of the wife with the husband, played a crucial role in Singapore's economic progress by encouraging fuller economic participation of women. The article then discusses the contributions of section 46 - modelled after a Swiss provision - which exhorts husband and wife to co-operate for their mutual benefit as well as to care for their children within the spouses' equal partnership of different efforts that marriage is. This exhortation places marriage firmly on a moral foundation. The moral message helps explain the remarkable developments within several areas of the family law in Singapore including the nature of the spousal relationship, parental responsibility to their children and the equitable division of matrimonial assets.

Beginning life in 1959 as the University of Malaya Law Review, the journal has undergone several transformations over the past half century, becoming first the Malaya Law Review and then the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. In addition,it has also spawned two other journals - the Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law (now the Singapore Yearbook of International Law) and the Asian Journal of Comparative Law. This essay takes a historical look at the development of the journal and the key personalities who have made it one of Asia's most respected legal publications.

Since Soeharto's fall in 1998, Indonesia has transformed from one of the world's most authoritarian states to one of its most democratic and decentralised. Significant lawmaking powers have been devolved to around 1000 local legislatures and executive officials. The combined legal output of these lawmakers has added great bulk, complexity and uncertainty to Indonesia's legal system. Many new local laws have been criticised for being misdirected or unclear, violating citizens' rights, imposing excessive taxes, even breaching Indonesia's international obligations. This article examines the bureaucratic mechanisms by which the national government can exercise control over local lawmaking, allowing it to strike down local laws contravening national law or the 'public interest'. It also analyses decisions of the Indonesian Supreme Court, which has jurisdiction to decide whether local laws contradict national laws. The article shows that bureaucratic and judicial review is flawed and is used largely to review and invalidate local laws imposing illegal taxation or user charges. Laws egregious for other reasons are, this research shows, likely to escape review altogether, or to be upheld by the Supreme Court without satisfactory explanation. This undermines the rule of law, may compromise the human rights provided to citizens in national laws and could affect Indonesia's ability to comply with some of its international obligations.

The lesson from the United States is that egalitarian law reform alone is inadequate to achieve gender equality, be it at home or in the workplace. Formal equality may be useful in defining some relations between adults, but family dynamics, as well as the realisation that state and market institutions must be responsive to human dependency and vulnerability, must also be factored into considerations of what is needed in the way of reforms. For example, merely encouraging egalitarian family policies has not resulted in significantly removing the obstacles to women's equal participation in the workplace when they become mothers. The State must also respond to the situation of women (and others) who are placed in vulnerable positions in the workplace because of the care work they perform in the family. A responsive State would pay attention to the operation and functioning of the institutions, entitlements and other mechanisms that provide the resources that individuals need in order to successfully undertake responsibility for those who are dependent in society, such as infants and children, as well as some elderly, disabled, or ill adults. It is time to expand our rhetoric of 'personal responsibility' to include a notion of 'shared responsibility', in which the state and market institutions are charged with ensuring that there is truly equality of access and opportunity. This would require the accommodation of our shared human vulnerability and dependency, as well as the undoing of institutional practices and relations that unduly privilege the circumstances of some workers while tolerating the structural disadvantages with which others grapple on a daily basis.

This article attempts a critical examination of the limitation period for a fatal accident claim brought for lost support by the dependants of a deceased person under the Civil Law Act 1956 of Malaysia.It aims to demonstrate that the said limitation period has caused, or is capable of causing, harsh and unfair results to litigants in Malaysia and that reform of the law is clearly necessary. Throughout the article, reference is made to the corresponding statutory provisions in the Civil Law Act of Singapore and where relevant, the proposals that have been made for reform in Singapore.