This paper attempts a critical analysis of the reasons which are often advanced and those which may be advanced to justify the elimination of accumulated preferred dividend arrears through corporate recapitalization schemes. It will also develop an argument based primarily on fundamental legal and economic principles to support the need for greater protection of preferred stockholders from such recapitalization schemes. The paper also explains why in the writer's opinion, the existing legislation in many of the American states and in Singapore are inadequate for this purpose.

The need for a proprietary interest in land on the part of the plaintiff in an action for private nuisance has for several years been the subject of judicial and academic debate. In a case decided recently by the House of Lords that debate appears, at least where the English courts are concerned, to have been resolved. This article examines the House of Lords' decision and considers its implications for courts elsewhere.

The Personal Data Protection Act 2012, which governs the collection, use and disclosure of personal data by organisations in Singapore, also establishes a statutory right of private action under s 48O. In light of the Bellingham litigation, this article addresses the questions of: (i) who can avail themselves of the right of action created by s 48O, whether a non-human entity be a “person” under s 48O and, if so, whether such an entity an appropriate beneficiary of s 48O; and (ii) the type of loss or damage s 48O envisages.

Since early 2005, members of the NUS Legal Skills Team have been engaged in a project jointly sponsored by the UNDP and the Singapore government to translate Lao laws into English. The translations have been adopted by the National Assembly of Laos, published online and made easily available with the aim of facilitating interaction between the international community and Laos. At this time, the team has already worked on more than three quarters of the total number of laws in Laos. This paper discusses the challenges faced by the project team and the insights gained in bridging the differences of language, legal system and culture. The author hopes that the insights will be relevant not just to those engaged in the process of legal translation but to transactional lawyers, law academics and other readers who have had to confront similar challenges in arriving at a true meeting of minds across legal systems and cultures

Classical constitutional theory identified three functions of government—law-making, lawenforcement, and adjudication of legal disputes—and assigned them to three distinct branches of government. As this tripartite framework began to break down over the course of the twentieth century, constitutional theorists identified a fourth function—the protection of the constitution itself. The corruption of high-level public officials can undermine democracy, in large part by generating public cynicism about the possibility that government can act for the general good. In principle, a structurally independent institution suggests itself as the solution, such as electoral commissions and anti-corruption institutions. This paper presents two case studies of institutions supporting democracy in South Africa and Brazil. It suggests that those who design these institutions, and those who staff them, should be sensitive to the complicated interactions between independence, necessary to ensure that high-level corruption comes under scrutiny, and accountability, necessary to ensure that anti-corruption investigations are well-integrated into the nation's system of government as a whole.

The states of ASEAN have adopted three distinct attitudes to foreign investment, each at a different level. At the international level, because of their membership of Third World groupings, they have associated themselves somewhat reluctantly, with the package of norms on foreign investment contained in the claims to a New International Economic Order. At the bilateral level, they have deviated from these norms and accepted the more traditional norms of foreign of foreign investment protection advocated by the capital-exporting States. However, there are indications in the bilateral investment treaties that such protection will not be given to all foreign investment. In their domestic laws on foreign investment, the ASEAN states, which generally believe in a strategy of foreign investment led development, have adopted a pragmatic approach. While devising mechanisms for controlling such investments to ensure that they contribute to national economic goals, they also seek to attract foreign capital by maintaining certain traditional norms of foreign investment protection. this article is a study of these trends. The general conclusion is that the ASEAN states would adhere to the pragmatic approach of maintaining national control while adhering to internationally accepted standards of investment protection.

A plaintiff-investor has been induced by pre-contractual misrepresentations to enter into an investment_x000D_ contract with a defendant-bank. This article discusses some of the issues which must be_x000D_ addressed in such cases. Although triggered by recent litigation between investors and banks, the_x000D_ discussion draws on basic commercial law principles which are of general application. Apart from the novel doctrine of 'contractual estoppel', there are alternative orthodox tools of the trade readily deployable by a commercial lawyer. These alternative means of reasoning include basic and well-established contract law principles of misrepresentation and traditional agency principles of authority, which have been overlooked because they have been overshadowed by contractual estoppel in current discourse. The point of this article is simply to take us back to basics by bringing these alternate analyses back into focus.

Exception 4 to Section 300 of the Penal Code has had an interesting history. For many years, it remained shrouded in mystery, at least in the local context, in that there were not many illustrations as to how the Singapore courts would apply the Exception to a give fact situation. Even after the pronouncements of the Privy Council in Mohamed Kunjo v PP [ 1978] 1 MLJ 51, there were not many cases where the Singapore courts had the opportunity to follow up on the lead of the Privy Council. However, after the case of PP v Seow Khoon Kwee [1989] 2 MLJ 100, there has been a deluge of cases in which the courts have had the opportunity to apply sudden fight. This article attempts to scrutinise the local cases in order to determine the corpus juris with regard to sudden fight in Singapore.

The crucial role that examination of witnesses plays in the determination of the weight of oral evidence in criminal proceedings has traditionally been hampered by excessive application of the hearsay rule and the rule against narrative, both of which to a greater or lesser extent, preclude access by the trier of fact to previous statements of the witness being examined which may shed valuable light on the veracity of his testimony in court. This article defends the law in Singapore permitting more liberal reliance on a witness's previous statements and argues that the liberalisation in the law can be taken further. The relevance of probabilistic reasoning in weight determination is also discussed and the article argues that probabilistic reasoning in weight determination should not be conflated with probabilistic reasoning in the determination of the standard of proof of guilt.

This article analyses the approach taken by Singapore's criminal and family laws when a child is taken away by one parent without consent of the other parent to another jurisdiction. International efforts to ameliorate the difficulties faced by the left-behind parent in tracing the whereabouts of the child and obtaining his or her return come in the form of the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Although Singapore is not a party to the Convention, signs of its acceptance in spirit can be seen in a recently decided case. It is argued however, that accepting the Convention is not enough on its own, and a thorough review of Singapore's criminal and family laws, which have hitherto developed separately, is needed to ensure that they speak with one voice and accord children the protection that they deserve