A rare parliamentary petition which sought the repeal of section 377A of the Penal Code that_x000D_ criminalises acts of gross indecency between male adults, was presented and debated in Parliament in October 2007. This article critically examines the constitutional law dimension and issues in relation to the 377A debate in Singapore. It highlights the primary jurisprudential thrust of the competing arguments and assumptions. It advances and defends the communitarian case for preserving 377A which the author argues is both normatively desirable and empirically reflective of existing Singapore law and policy. With particular regard to the Singapore context, it reflects on how democratic societies should address questions of law and profound moral disagreement, the importance of civil debate,_x000D_ and whether the legislative or judicial forum is most appropriate for making decisions on morally controversial questions.

The construction of the rule of law in China has become an international concern. This article discusses the impact of WTO accession on China's legal reform in the context of the rule of law jurisprudence. It discusses the "thin"/"thick" theories of the rule of law, arguing that the Lon Fuller's "thin" theory of the rule of law is a suitable model in the Chinese context. It sees that the "thin" version creates possibilities for the realization of any "thick" theories of the rule of law, including a liberal democratic version, albeit a sudden jump to this "thick" version is neither pragmatic nor even possible. China's urgent task at this stage is to build the requisite institutions to facilitate the establishment of a "thin" rule of law. Compliance with WTO obligations can directly help achieve this goal in terms of transparency, impartial application of laws, and judicial review.

This article examines the problems in quantifying the future periodic income loss of a young plaintiff who is entitled to damages for lost future income. Most young plaintiffs would not have a relevant pre-injury salary that could be used in the computation. It is argued that a national "average" wage should be used unless there is evidence to support a different figure.

Did the recent UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) conclude with only pious aspirations or solid achievements? Among the documents adopted at UNCED was Agenda 21, an ambitious plan of action to tackle both global and national environmental problems, a Statement of Principles on Forests, and the Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development. This article considers what influence, if any, the Rio Declaration might exert in relation to the further development of international environmental law.

This article reviews the main patterns of Asian migration in Europe and the ways in which Europe today has become 'multicultured' with Afro-Asian legal diversities. It discusses the limited role which Asian states have played in the processes of emigration and settlement. It further examines the status of the laws transplanted by Asian migrants and their descendants in Europe and the ways in which Asian diasporas in Europe are engaging in new hybrid patterns of socio-legal navigation and reconstruction. The article is critical of European legal orders as not having reacted adequately to these patterns of Asian legal reconstruction but also urges Asian legal scholars to investigate this underexplored field in more detail.

The issue of whether a person who has been lawfully detained can, nevertheless, bring an action for false imprisonment has recently been considered by both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in England. In two cases involving prisoners allegedly subjected to adverse conditions, the courts questioned whether such circumstances could give rise to an action for false imprisonment, or whether the remedy should lie, if at all, in other torts. This article examines the impact of these decisions and considers their implications in the Singapore context.

In “Legal Reasons, Sources and Gaps”, Joseph Raz points out that statements of reasons – mainly, conclusive legal reasons – are the most basic category of legal analysis. The conceptual importance of statements of legal reason implies that legal philosophers must use them to explain other legal concepts. In this sense, Raz claims that conclusive reason is a useful analytical tool for dealing with a classic problem of legal philosophy: gaps in the law. Raz defends a particular form of indeterminacy of law, which are ordinary gaps produced by the imprecision of the concepts used in the formulation of legal norms (when the law speaks with an uncertain voice) or by specific conflicting legal reasons (when the law speaks with many voices). In such cases, judges have discretion to resolve legal disputes. However, he denies that the law can have genuine gaps (when the law is silent) and, in those cases, judges lack discretion. In this paper, I criticise Raz’s arguments for denying the existence of genuine gaps in the law and suggest an alternative which partially preserves Raz’s intuitions but does not compromise with their implausible consequences.

This paper confronts the continued viability of two entrenched features of administrative law in Singapore. First, it argues that the taxonomy for organising the grounds of judicial review (illegality, irrationality and procedural fairness) is likely to be incrementally tested in Singapore through the development of newer grounds of judicial review. This paper looks at three particular grounds of review to exemplify this: review for errors of law; review for errors of fact and the doctrine of substantive legitimate expectations. Secondly, and related to the first, the paper interrogates the continued utility of the 'truism' that courts should only review the 'legality' and not the 'merits' of executive decision-making. It argues that this may no longer be an optimal way of balancing the various competing constitutional imperatives at play when determining the appropriate scope of judicial review by courts. Following this critique, the paper provides preliminary thoughts on two modest proposals for how administrative law can move forward to account for the developments that are testing these features of the law. It proposes: (a) a gradual and incremental move away from a taxonomy or categorisation of grounds of review to an approach organised around varying the nature and intensity of review to demarcate the scope and boundaries of judicial review; and (b) a more intentional and careful consideration of the way in which remedies are pleaded by applicants and framed by the courts in their rulings.

In 2005, the archaic laws of sedition were summoned to counteract speech considered offensive to racial and religious groups in Singapore. Under the Sedition Act, it is seditious to, inter alia, promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population. In a later case involving religious proselytisation, a Christian couple was charged and convicted of sedition under the same section. This article examines this new phenomenon. It investigates the manner in which these laws have been employed and jurisprudentially developed to restrain speech on race and/or religion in Singapore. The article argues that the current state of the law is highly problematic for its adverse impact on free speech as well as for its conceptual confusions with alternative bases for restraining speech. It contends that failure to extricate the existing conceptual confusions is adverse to free speech and community integration in the long run. A threefold legal framework is proposed to provide clearer guidance on inter-racial and inter-religious interaction within the Singaporean society.