Using case studies of Muslim minorities in Canada and Singapore, this paper examines the complex relationship between multiculturalism and national security. The first part of the paper examines the different characteristics of Muslim minorities in Canada and Singapore with an emphasis on how Canada's Muslim minority is smaller, more diverse and less well established than Singapore's. The next section examines some of the dangers of hurried or heavy-handed attempts to merge concerns about multiculturalism with security that do not build on pre-existing institutions and inter-group relations. The next part outlines Canada's and Singapore's main responses to 9/11 with special attention to how these responses may affect the Muslim minorities in both countries and the way each society has managed the arrest and detention of suspected terrorists. The next section explores the role of transparent and independent review of national security activities in the maintenance of public confidence in the fairness of the state's security strategies in multicultural societies. The final section critically examines the emerging trend of prosecuting speech associated with terrorism and the consequent blurring of anti-terrorism and anti-hate rationales for the prohibition of extreme political or religious speech. The article concludes with a discussion of how Canada and Singapore will deal with the challenges of crafting national security policies for their multicultural societies in their own distinct manner.

Constitutional texts are products of conscious deliberation, although Westminster-based Constitutions are not exhaustive. This article examines whether there are implied rights in the Singapore Constitution, given express ministerial statements affirming the constitutional status of an implied right to vote. It evaluates the debates concerning the legal status of voting rights and explores the possible theoretical bases which may ground an interpretive method supporting the 'declaration' of implied fundamental rights, the legitimacy and nature of constitutional implications. Attention is paid to Australian experience in the judicial derivation of an implied right to freedom of political communication in considering methods of constitutional implications. It considers whether it is beneficial and desirable to have an express constitutional right to vote, what its content might be and reflects on the Singapore model of representative democracy and citizenship.

The process of globalisation has rapidly made crime borderless. This poses challenges to existing rules on jurisdiction, particularly of countries like Singapore which, as a result of the common law tradition, have shown reluctance to deviate from the territoriality principle. This article argues that such states should move away from this position and respond to the new phenomenon of global integration of criminal syndicates by adopting more innovative theories of jurisdiction. It uses money-laundering to explore the alternative strategies that may be adopted.

The decision of the High Court in PP v Knight Glenn Jeyasingam contains what is probably the most important discussion of the law of privilege in recent years. A plea negotiation privilege was brought into existence, without express statutory sanction, through the medium of "purposive interpretation". This article uses this decision as a springboard to discuss the two core issues in the law of privilege - the determination of whether a privilege should exist at all, and the task of marking the boundaries of an existing privilege. The meaning of "purposive interpretation" in the context of a clash between contending and incompatible social values -the integrity of the judicial fact-finding process and the value sought to be protected by the privilege - is explored.

The article examines the problems arising from the current approach relating to the stay of proceedings commenced in breach of exclusive jurisdiction arrangements. Both Singapore and English cases are referred to. A new approach is proposed in response to these problems.

Much concern has been expressed over the problem of 'short-termism' as evidenced in the numerous discussion papers made public by industry and investor associations and regulatory bodies in the US and the UK. While concerns over short-termism and its effects are not new, the short-termism being experienced now is the result of structural changes brought about by agency theory based managerial compensation and its four legged strategy of short term managerial employment contracts, stock based compensation, high stock price, and the pursuit of high-risk high-return investment strategies to achieve the latter. This article investigates the changes to corporate governance structure that have produced short-termism, short-termism's present form and continuing hold, how it has impacted on corporate governance, and what, if anything, should be done about it.

This article explores the relationship between descriptive and normative work in general legal theory by focusing on the possibility of describing contingent evaluations, as contrasted with a theoretical commitment to such an evaluation. This gives rise to a crucial distinction between analytical- descriptive and aspirational-normative theoretical work. Part I traces different levels of theoretical analysis, and the recognition of different theoretical roles in tackling normative subject matter. Part II introduces a triple-level analytical scheme developed to expand the Hohfeldian analysis of legal rights. This additional analytical resource is then utilised in working through different levels of the analysis of legal rights, and to reveal some points of overlap with the different levels of analysis of law’s normativity found in Part I. This broader understanding is then related to the different theoretical roles identified in Part I, so as to produce a classification of theoretical approaches to rights, with the aim of revealing where intelligible discourse between them is possible.

In June 2003, the government adopted the Declaration on Religious Harmony as part of a multi-pronged strategy to address the problem of aggravated ethnic-religious relations, heightened after the discovered of the bomb plot masterminded by Jemaah Islamiah, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda. This instrument belongs to a corpus of 'constitutional soft law', a set of precepts embodied in a text lacking legal status which exerts some degree of legal impact and influences the shaping of state-society relations. Such informal standards shed light on the politico-legal culture, process values of participatory democracy and the practical workings of institutional restraints on public power and governance. This article examples the role of these informal standards within the context of a written constitution, with a particular focus on the Declaration-whose principles have implications for the scope and practice of religious liberty in Singapore, a secular state with a religious society.

The negative pledge clause has been in use for many years and is to be found in virtually all loan documents. The negative pledge clause usually seeks to protect the unsecured creditor by providing contractually that the debtor shall not, so long as any part of the indebtedness remains outstanding, create any security in favour of another creditor. It is also used to protect floating chargees by restricting the freedom which the chargor has to deal with the assets comprised in the floating charge. The efficacy of the negative pledge clause depends on a number of factors. In some instances, the negative pledge clause will improve the position of the unsecured creditor and the floating chargee. This "security" aspect of the negative pledge clause is discussed in this article.