The doctrine of statutory illegality as it has been traditionally and widely understood is designed to identify, so to speak, contracts which are void because they are either expressly prohibited by statute or prohibited by necessary implication. The question which is addressed in this article is whether the doctrine of statutory illegality can ever operate so as to make a contract void, but not by the guilty party.

This article seeks to draw out the constitutional significance of recent events and developments in Singapore government and politics and to provide a provisional orientation for evaluating the legal issues raised. These developments illumine the nature of local constitutional culture as well as issues of identity, rights discourse and modalities of accountability, as an aspect of Singapore constitutionalism. Topics examined include the issue of minority rights and state interests in the light of the tudung controversy, developments towards a "self-regulatory" model of parliamentary democracy and the issue of unenumerated constitutional liberties as a possible line of development in Singapore constitutional jurisprudence.

Falling standards in media ethics has been a global and alarming phenomenon. One particular trend is to treat sex scandals as info-tainment for the masses and to boost sales. In 2001 and 2002, the Chu Mei Feng scandal in Taiwan and the Carina Lau Kar Ling incident in Hong Kong shocked the Chinese community. Privacy issues and obscenity laws were immediately invoked and many called for tighter control of the press. Careful analysis, however, will reveal that legal regulations are inherently limited and unable to grant adequate protection to victims. Ironically, in both cases, the protagonists got their ultimate revenge not through the court but by waging a war against the media through the media. This paper therefore argues that unless there is an alteration of the gender bias in society, tighter legal regulations of the press will only sacrifice press freedom without helping the victims.

The Singapore Civil Law (Amendment) Act, effective 1 March 2009, lowered the age of full contractual capacity from 21 to 18 with the sole aim of encouraging entrepreneurship among the young. This article examines if currently available scientific evidence and practical considerations indicate:_x000D_ (i) whether there is utility in using an age-based criterion for conferring full contractual capacity and thus denying legal protection in contracting in light of the need to balance protection of minors in contracting against encouraging youthful entrepreneurship; (ii) even if useful, whether full contractual capacity should be conferred from age 18 in the Singapore context; and (iii) if extra measures ought to have accompanied the lowering of the age of full contractual capacity to mitigate potential problems affecting consumer-minors and entrepreneur-minors who are now deprived of previously available legal protection under contract law.

Takaful (Islamic insurance) is a form of cooperative insurance involving the allocation and spreading of risk. Its phenomenal growth in Malaysia, Pakistan and the Gulf States and its untapped potential in Indonesia, China and India have resulted in global insurance markets like the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia positioning themselves as leading conventional and Islamic financial centres. This article examines the takaful regulations in Muslim-majority jurisdictions where takaful is offered on a large scale, such as Malaysia, Bahrain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Indonesia, Egypt, Brunei, Sudan and Iran, with respect to the core takaful principles of good faith, disclosure, non-misrepresentation, insurable interest, reciprocity in claims handling and the ensuing remedies. This, along with an analysis of the international takaful standards set by the_x000D_ Islamic Financial Services Board, will be benchmarked against Australia's and the UK's progressive_x000D_ insurance provisions in assessing the viability of harmonising takaful regulations amongst Muslimmajority_x000D_ jurisdictions.

This article surveys the current international movement on the protection of intellectual property rights and its impact on developing countries, in particular Thailand.

Pro bono has changed radically in Singapore over the past 60 years, emerging from relative obscurity to become an important regulatory and educational issue. NUS Law has contributed to the growth of pro bono in Singapore through student pro bono. Currently these student activities are not limited to supporting the pro bono of lawyers and organisations, and they contribute directly to access to justice by providing the public and litigants in person with legal information. The character of student pro bono at NUS Law therefore suggests a shift in focus, from pro bono to the primary goal of access to justice.

In the past, a number of English authorities have suggested that unlawful interference with trade (now also known as "causing loss by unlawful means" is a "genus" tort that provides the rationale as well as framework for analysing various economic torts including intimidation and conspiracy by unlawful means. However, this view has been decidedly rejected by the House of Lords in OBG Ltd. v. Allan. The majority judges in that case restricted the tort to one that redresses only unjustified interferences with third-party liberty. Since it has a multi-party structure, it is conceptually distinct from cases where liability has been imposed for direct (two-party) interferences. On this view, two-party intimidation, unlawful means conspiracy and causing loss by unlawful means are separate torts despite their common reliance on an independent legal wrong. It also means that there is no single thread that runs through this "family" of economic torts. While the element of illegality is an essential and common constituent of these torts, it is not the sole element that justifies the tort. Rather, each tort is founded on the combination of a particular course of conduct with the requisite unlawfulness. Consequently (and more controversially), it is now no longer meaningful to identify a single conception of "unlawful means" that is applicable to all these torts. In each case, it is essential to ensure that the illegality constitutes the tort only if it produces the type of conduct that the tort is designed to deter.

This article aims to consider the adequacy and efficacy of civil remedies for insider trading presently available in Singapore. The insider trading regimes in the USA, the UK and Australia will be looked at as potential sources of inspiration for reform. The term "civil remedies" refers to the civil relief available both under the common law and under specific legislation against the insider trader. This relief usually takes the form of monetary compensation. The focus of this article on civil remedies essentially excludes any discussion of the criminal penalties imposed upon a wrongdoer as a result of prosecution. The possible claimants for civil relief could be a securities regulatory authority, the corporate issuer of the securities that were subject to insider trading, or the counterparty to the insider in a securities transaction.