In an earlier volume, I argued that state policies based on ethno-racial essentialism were undesirable and that accommodative liberalism provided a commendable alternative, enabling states to take seriously the need for ethnic groups to protect their cultural institutions and respective identities without resorting to essentialist assumptions. These arguments have since been subject to critical scrutiny by Lim Chin Leng in his essay, "Multicultural Constitutionalism." I respond to Lim's criticisms, arguing: (a) that accommodative liberalism takes group rights seriously and does not collapse into atomistic individualism; (b) that accommodative liberalism can protect group rights without resorting to essentialist assumptions; and (c) that despite its parochial origins in western political thought, accommodative liberalism dies have something to contribute to the wider debate about multicultural policy, even in Southeast Asia. Accommodative liberalism, I argue, represents a plausible attempt to construct a "big tent" - a flexible approach to pluralism and tolerance in diverse societies.

This paper deals with copyright and moral rights issues in the works of Indian national poet, C Subramania Bharati. Its focus is on policy questions, touching on the protection of the artistic integrity of creative works, the democratization of access to literature, the possibility of perpetual moral rights protection in artistic works of exceptional national importance, and the appropriate role of moral rights in developing countries. The analysis will concentrate on Indian copyright law. It will also consider the impact of international copyright developments on the law in India, concluding with a brief critique of international principles in their application to developing countries.

The story of "Personal Equities" in Singapore is a fascinating one. The first successful claim of a "personal equities" outside the statutory regime in Singapore surfaced some forty years after the introduction of the Torrens system in 1956. Subsequently, the "personal equities exception" was affirmed by one Court of Appeal and rejected by another. Since then, the Singapore courts have proceeded on the basis that there is a finite list of "personal equities" listed in section 46(2) of the Land Titles Act. This article proposes to explore these developments and demonstrate that the "personal equities exception" is in truth not an exception to indefeasibility. As a matter of statutory interpretation, such claims are simply not caught in the first place by the principle of indefeasibility as conferred by section 46(1) of the Land Titles Act. As such, potential "personal equities" claims ought not to be limited by section 46(2) exclusively.

During the nineteenth century, liabilities at common law came to be seen as principally divided into those based on contract, which needed consideration, and those based on tortious wrongdoing. Certain instances of liability that had been developed in equity and which were based on what we would now term as "detrimental reliance" did not then meet with acceptance and vanished from the legal scene. Some survived however, and this lecture deals with two of them, which have come to be known as promissory estoppel and proprietary estoppel. The extent of liability under the former, and the remedies under the latter, need reconsideration, and this lecture does this through a discussion of some of the cases in the area, new and old.

Taking its departure from the Court of Appeal decision in Republic of the Philippines v Maler Foundation, this article argues that the authorities support a self-supporting rule for accepting or rejecting a foreign confiscatory law. This rule, not unlike the rule against direct or indirect enforcement of a foreign penal, revenue or other public law, is based on considerations of territorial sovereignty and is not a choice of law rule that selects the lex situs as governing law. The implications of a rule based on considerations of sovereignty and in particular the contrast with an analysis based on the lex situs rule are elaborated.