Under Singapore's Westminster derived parliamentary government system, the President as the ceremonial head of state possessed very limited residual discretionary powers. The Constitution, incorporating British convention, requires the President to act in accordance with Cabinet advice. Come 1991, Singapore remained a dominant one party state with untrammeled power reposed in the Cabinet. By constitutional amendment, the presidency was transformed into an elective office vested with certain negatively couched discretionary powers to check the powerful parliamentary executive. This article examines the development of the institution and the major amendments which have taken place pertaining to the elected presidency since its inception. It assesses the extent to which the presidency has effectively "clipped the wings" of the government that created it. In particular, the first constitutional reference heard on March 17, 1995 under the newly created Article 100 tribunal is discussed.

It is easy to think of the corroboration rules as a thing of the past – something which in a few years will no longer plague the law of evidence. Yet we must not forget the apparently intractable problem which they were designed to deal with – that of oath against oath, one person's word against another. Both historically and presently, the law has had to struggle with a choice between a regime of rules or a system of discretion; and the result is a fascinating compound of rule and discretion.

This paper concerns the legal framework governing non-party access to court records in Singapore. It provides a brief comparative study of the access frameworks in Australia and the UK. From this comparative analysis, guiding principles and procedures are distilled to facilitate suggestions on how Singapore's current access regime may be reformed. Open justice and the freedom of information and expression may be fundamental principles, but they do not mandate an unquestioned right of access to judicial records as the interests of justice may be served by both disclosure and non-disclosure. Both principles must be balanced against competing considerations, such as confidentiality and the right to a fair trial. An access regime is not built on open justice alone. It must adeptly reconcile all the competing factors in a manner which best secures the proper administration of justice.

The European Union Data Protection Directive requires member states to place restrictions on transfers of personal data to countries that cannot guarantee an adequate level of data protection. Countries that do guarantee adequate protection enjoy a smooth business environment and an enhanced ability to participate in trade. In this paper I examine the adequacy of Singapore's data protection regime, and in particular the Model Data Protection Code. I suggest various amendments to the regime to enable Singapore to meet the Directive requirements. To carry out the assessment, I use a framework developed by the Article 29 Working Party, the body that in practice carries out the official adequacy assessments for the EU.

The recent rejection by the drought-stricken Southern African countries of genetically modified ("GM") food donated by the United States mainly on safety grounds and the divergent scientific views on the propriety of their objection, have rekindled the debates on public health implications of GM food consumption and cast shadows on agricultural biotechnology's prospects. This paper examines the disparate scientific views on GM food safety, the place of consumer's choice, legal, and ethical issues in GM food governance in the context of Singapore, which relies entirely on food imports.

This article essentially examines the question as to whether there is any basis, in principle, for the existence and application of an extra-statutory defence based on the general public interest in the law of copyright in Singapore. The article begins by tracing the history of the defence of public interest that is sometimes raised by defendants in actions for copyright infringement in England. It looks at how the defence at common law- and whether correctly or not- found its way into the U.K. Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 and examines the interpretation accorded to it by the English courts. Adopting a comparative approach, the article then examines the issue from the Australian perspective and concludes by asking how Singapore should approach the question of public interest in our domestic law of copyright.

There is the controversy over whether human rights are a western concept. Western countries often seek to impose their standards through human rights. It is contended that human rights are alien to Asian culture. The article examines some of the issues in the Asian context and concludes that human rights are nothing new, but have long been nurtured and cherished by Asian societies, and have a strong religious and social backing in such societies, further, it is pointed out that the attempt by western powers to utilise human rights as an instrument of political pressure is resented and due regard should be paid to regional particularities.

The dichotomy traditionally drawn in copyright law between literary works and artistic works has to be reviewed in the light of recent cases, from England and Singapore, holding that circuit diagrams and the like qualify as a literary work and as an artistic work. This article examines the implications arising from the overlap between literary copyright and artistic copyright in this area.

This article explores the legal risks involved in depositing cryptocurrency with crypto-custodians such as crypto-exchanges. These risks materialise most acutely in case these crypto-custodians fall insolvent, which has happened over the last decade in several instances. Recent years have witnessed the demise of crypto-exchanges such as Cryptopia (New Zealand), QuadrigaCX (Canada), BitGrail (Italy) and a host of other crypto-exchanges around the world. These cases reveal that the qualification of the contractual and property law rights of crypto-investors is problematic. This is why this article discusses which rights crypto-investors can and should be able to assert in case a crypto-custodian falls insolvent. To answer this question, the (legal) qualification of bitcoin is analysed (can it be owned and if so, how can such ownership be created and transferred?) and the status of deposited_x000D_ bitcoins is discussed (do stored crypto-assets form a part of the crypto-custodian's insolvency estate or can they be revendicated by customers?). Private international law aspects form the starting point of the legal analysis (which court has jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings and hear cryptoinvestors' claims, and what law applies to such claims?) and the analysis is based on the current terms and conditions of major crypto-custodians.

This report is a continuation of the survey on the more important developments in the area of commercial law in Indonesia published in previous editions of the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. The present survey covers the period from January 1992 to May 1994.