As comparative lawyer Otto Kahn-Freund observed in the mid-1970s, there is a "far reaching free trade in legal ideas. Far reaching, not all embracing". We see this manifested in the law of privacy, whether understood in the traditional sense of freedom from intrusion into private life or some more extended sense of, for instance, control over personal information or physical or sensory integrity stretching beyond the enjoyment of an intimate interior private life. On the one hand, there is a great deal of cross-fertilisation across jurisdictions as elements of the law of one are copied in others, allowing certain broad groupings to evolve. On the other hand, there are still many differences between and within these groupings which may be partly due to the different legal contexts of the laws, but are also partly due to factors having to do with different social-cultural histories and norms, as well as different political environments within which laws are developed, interpreted, and enforced. These tensions have ongoing implications for the protection of privacy in the digital century. Yet there are hopeful signs of the possibility of convergence around legal standards of privacy protection in the future, as in the present and past—for all the legal, social-cultural and political differences that remain and for all the new challenges to privacy that we can expect to see.

Section 4(1)( c ) of the Singapore Trustees Act gives trustees the power to invest in land, as does the corresponding provision of the Malaysian Trustee Act. However, the power is subject to restrictions and, although it has existed for over fifty years, there are no reported cases on it. This article reviews the restrictions on the trustees' powers to invest in land in the light of the legislative history of the provision and concludes with a recommendation for reform of the law.

One of the hazards of litigation which a plaintiff has to accept, is the risk of the defendant surreptitiously disposing of his assets so as to evade any judgment that may be obtained against him. Until recently there was little that the plaintiff could do to minimise the risk, for it was generally accepted that until judgment the assets of the defendant were inviolable. On the 22nd of May 1975, the English Court of Appeal in Nippon Yusen Kaisha v. Karageorgis, departed from the previous practice and granted an ex-parte interlocutory injunction to restrain non-resident defendants from removing out of the jurisdiction, any of their assets located within the jurisdiction. This form of injunction is now commonly referred to as the Mareva injunction and is now a well established feature of English law. In the local context, the existence of a Mareva jurisdiction has been confirmed both in Malaysia and Singapore. In Zainal Abidin v. Century Hotel Sdn. Bhd., the Federal Court of Malaysia confirmed the existence of the jurisdiction, although the High Court in Malaya had earlier denied that it had jurisdiction. In Singapore it would appear that the existence of the Mareva jurisdiction had been recognised for some time by the High Court, although it was only in Art Trend Ltd. v. Blue Dolphin (Pte) Ltd., that a written judgment was delivered by the High Court confirming the existence of the jurisdiction. The purpose of this article will be to examine three aspects of the Mareva injunction.

This article asks whether the High Court can grant bare declarations of marital status. English courts had been wavering and the UK Parliament recently enacted express powers. The author argues that Singapore courts should not be hesitant. They originally possessed inherent power to grant such declarations and this was never relinquished.

This article examines the developments in the process of discovery in civil cases in the course of this decade and accesses changes in policy concerning the disclosure of evidence before trial. Singapore's position in this area of procedure is compared to that operation in other common law legal systems.

This article examines the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act enacted in the United Kingdom in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States last year. The article first identifies the critical framework of the discussion by analysing the reactive quality of the debate on terrorism and questioning the effectiveness of anti-terrorist legislation. The article then considers the concept of terrorism under UK law, before turning to a more specific discussion of the Act, particularly in three areas: tracking terrorist finance, detention and identification of suspected offenders and security measures. Finally, Part IX of the article also provides a European dimension in its discussion on some European Union anti-terrorist initiatives.

This discussion addresses the efforts to design and implement a family court in Singapore. Three main aspects are covered in separate sections. The first concerns the definition and brief history of the family court. The second section succinctly examines the three main factors fostering the collaboration across fields of knowledge in the planning and setting up of family courts. I conclude in the third section with some comments on the potential of this collaboration for the solution or containment of family problems locally, based on Singapore's historical and current situation.