The recent U.K. Supreme Court decision in Marley v. Rawlings, concerning the rectification of a will pursuant to English legislation, raises two points of reflection for Singapore law. These points arise not from the ratio of the case, which was decided on a narrow legislative basis, but from the well-considered obiter dicta contained in Lord Neuberger's judgment.

Sometimes, following a conviction, an appeal is brought by the convicted person without any crossappeal by the Prosecution on the sentence. Can the appellate court nevertheless increase the sentence imposed below? This study of the relevant cases and statutory provisions in Singapore suggests that both the High Court and the Court of Appeal are vested with the power to increase the sentence even where the only appeal is brought by the convicted person.

Animal law is a little-known subject in Singapore. However, the increase in public awareness and concern about animal welfare issues demand that more attention is directed at the legal aspects of such issues. An opportunity to examine this area of the law arose in the case of Ling Chung Yee Roy. The District Court, presided by District Judge Ng Peng Hong, had to decide whether the accused was guilty of an animal cruelty offence under s. 42(1)(e) of the Animals and Birds Act. The section provides that "[a]ny person who causes, procures or, being the owner, permits to be confined, conveyed, lifted or carried any animal in such a manner or position as to subject it to unnecessary pain or suffering shall be guilty of an offence." This case is important for two reasons. First, it adds to the few existing local case law on animal cruelty. It is the first time a Singapore court has considered a situation that falls short of obvious cruelty. This made it necessary for the court to examine more carefully the legal requirements of the cruelty offence, particularly the meaning of "unneccesary suffering", in order to determine the scope of its application. By contrast, the previous cases all involved serious abuse, which clearly amounted to a cruelty offence, thus making it unnecessary to state the scope of the offence with precision. Secondly, the case was decided shortly after the government accepted the recommendation of the Animal welfare Legislation Review Committee ("AWLRC") to amend the ABA to impose a duty on a person responsible for an animal to ensure its welfare. An examination of the relationship between cruelty law and welfare law will be useful in determining the continued importance of Ling Chung Yee Roy when the statutory amendment comes into force.

I have been teaching the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (11 April 1980, 1489 U.N.T.S. 31, 19 I.L.M. 668 (entered into force 1 January 1988, ratification by Singapore 16 Feb 1995) [CISG]) for 20 years, first at McGill and then at the National University of Singapore. At first there was no short textbook I could recommend to students.

Positive Obligations in Criminal Law is a collection of essays rather than a monograph, loosely unified by a concern with the positive duties owed by citizens and/or the state, as the title might suggest. Certainly, there are essays that engage directly with positive obligations, including those on omissions (Chapter 2), human rights (Chapter 8) and, perhaps less obviously, ignorance of the law (Chapter 3). Other essays, such as those on strict and constructive liability (Chapters 4, 5) and on riskbased possession offences (Chapter 6), are really only tangentially connected to that theme. Yet the book is none the worse for that. In truth, it is a collection of somewhat disparate but individually excellent essays on some central topics in the criminal law. As such, the collection is likely to be an important point of reference for many years to come.

The Singapore Penal Code (Cap. 224, 2008 Rev. Ed. Sing.) [Penal Code] is all but identical to the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (No. 45 of 1860) [Indian Penal Code]. It is well-known that Thomas Babington Macaulay was in substance the sole author of the original draft of the Indian Penal Code and that many of the virtues of the original draft survived the legislative process. At the time of its enactment there was nothing comparable in the common law world. The clarity of expression and the precision of its drafting shone brightly when contrasted with what Stanley Yeo aptly describes in his introduction (at p. 1) as "the" confusing and cumbersome state of English criminal law at the time".

The law of private nuisance is riddled with archaic rules and modern contradictions, and in recent years, it has received significant attention from the courts and legal scholars as it attempts to evolve to address interferences with one's access to telecommunications and sunlight in an increasingly urbanised environment. In The Law of Private Nuisance, Allan Beever criticises the proclivity of a majority of commentators for describing the law of private nuisance "as coming in separate parts" and therefore engaging in an exercise of "limited rationality" (at p. 3). Beever claims to propose an alternative framework that "focuses on the prioritising of property rights" (at p. 2).

Privacy has been said to be a concept in an utter mess. In his influential treatise, The Rights of Publicity and Privacy (2nd ed., 2005), J. Thomas McCarthy laments: "It is apparent that the word 'privacy' has proven to be a powerful rhetorical battle cry in a plethora of unrelated context. Like the emotive word 'freedom', 'privacy' means so many different things to so many different people that it has lost any preciselegal connotation that it might once have had" (at para. 5.59). Data Protection Law in Singapore, edited by Professor Simon Chesterman, is a timely and muchwelcomed collection of essays that not only address myriad perspectives on the issue of data protection, but also provide tantalising views on the challenges to privacy and sovereignty brought about by the digital revolution. Singapore enacted the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (Act 26 of 2012) [PDPA] on 15 October 2012 and it came into effect on 2 January 2013, with businesses given 18 months to comply before the PDPA became enforceable on July 2014. The book's examination of the way in which Singapore has responded to the problems brought about by data collection, aggregation, use and dissemination in the 21st century through the enactment of the PDPA will no doubt be of great interest to practitioners, policy makers and legal scholars.

This eagerly-anticipated book provides an excellent introduction to the world of mergers and acquisitions ("M&A"), which is perhaps a more high value-added form of corporate practice, and one in which lawyers must understand the nature of deals in general. Whereas initial public offerings, and even general corporate work, are usually directly correlated with the health of the economy, public M&A work - like insolvency workouts - can sometimes be countercyclical in that it comes to the fore when the securities markets are weak and the need for companies to consolidate strong.

As the Chief Justice of the host nation for the 26th LAWASIA Conference and the 15th Biennial Conference of Chief Justices of Asia and the Pacific, it is my privilege on behalf of all my fellowcitizens to welcome such a distinguished and well-represented audience to Singapore. I wish, in particular, to extend a warm welcome and a hand of friendship to my counterparts, the Chief Justices and senior members of the judiciaries of more than 40 jurisdictions. I also wish to welcome the close to 300 delegates from more than 25 countries who have come to our island nation for the LAWASIA Conference.