Rule of law seems to be experiencing a bit of a dark period in China right now. Corruption is endemic; popular protests against unlawful government actions seem to be at an all-time high; and at the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the partystate has become increasingly aggressive in suppressing people who are seeking to use law rather than violence to express grievances and felt injustices against public officials. Universities have even been told that academics should not talk about the constitution and constitutionalism.

The Construction of Commercial Contracts by Professor J.W. Carter is an ambitious book. Its stated aim is to “explain as a coherent whole the principles which regulate the construction of commercial contracts” (at p. vii). As will be seen, it more than meets this lofty aim, and is a valuable contribution to an area of work that is not only difficult, but also of immense practical importance. The book achieves its aim by explaining construction as constituting three separate stages: the identification of context (and terms), the determination of the meaning (and legal effect) of a contract, and, finally, the application of a contract to the factual circumstances that have arisen (see p. vii). This central thesis is primarily supplemented by detailed references to English and Australian law, but references to other Commonwealth jurisdictions (including Singapore), as well as the UNIDROIT principles, CISG and the American Restatement (Second) of Contracts, are also made where relevant. The structural result is a book neatly organised around seven parts, with Parts I to III setting out the general concepts and themes behind the book, in addition to the general principles that apply to the construction of commercial contracts.

The law of unfair competition stands at the intersection between several spheres of law: these include tort law, antitrust law, intellectual property law, consumer protection law and various statutory regimes regulating specific areas of commercial conduct. Given the divergence between the legal traditions of different legal systems, particularly between the common law and civil law based jurisdictions, the organisational structure of this area of the law varies dramatically from country to country. The scope of unfair competition encompasses areas of conduct as diverse as product design, sales, advertising, marketing and other commercial dealings with a trader's competitors, customers, and parties upstream or downstream from the business. While all these legal systems recognise the importance of regulating the behaviour of traders in the marketplace to ensure compliance with their respective ethical norms of fair conduct and honesty, their individual approaches towards responding to these issues depend very much upon the architecture of their respective legal regimes.

The opening chapter alone holds forth the promise of a tantalising read, unusual for a book on commercial law. It begins with an account of English adventurers bound for Virginia who are shipwrecked off Bermuda. This sets the scene for the subsequent settlement of the uninhabited islands by the British in 1609. The incident fires the imagination of the Bard. He references the “Bermoothes” in The Tempest (1st ed., 1623), conceiving “the islands as a place where valuable property could be safely hidden” (at p. 3). Fact, fiction and fortune are masterfully blended into a cocktail of factors explaining Bermuda's development as an offshore financial centre. It is evident that painstaking efforts were made to create a legal work that is at once both practical and scholarly. This book rejects the patois of the commercial marketplace for a more elegant literary style which flows right through the book and lends cohesiveness to the contributions by some 25 authors. The result is a comprehensive manual for offshore business in Bermuda and one which is a reflection of the country's sophistication as an offshore financial centre.

It is not customary to commence a keynote address with caveats and disclaimers. However, this is the rare occasion when such qualifications are necessary because - if I may be permitted a crude pun - of the lack of qualifications of the speaker himself. This is not false modesty. It is very real. I know that I have often been referred to in the Singapore context as a legal historian.1 Clearly, the dearth of personnel has been a reason for what I consider to be an oversight. I have no professional qualifications - or formal training - in history (except for a couple of courses in, respectively, English and American legal history during my postgraduate studies).2 I have some interest - but only as a rank amateur. As a result, nothing I shall say will be of any significance to virtually all (if not all) of you. However, as I shall elaborate upon later, in the spirit of diversity which I believe the discipline of history in general and of legal history in particular represents, I trust that the somewhat different perspectives which are contained in this paper will be of some interest to you - if only because some thoughts might arise even from the mistakes I make.

When I first arrived in Singapore, in 1961, the retail banking world was dominated by British-based banks. The leading players were the Chartered Bank and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The local banks known to me were the Chung Khiaw Bank, the Lee Hwa Bank and the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation ("OCBC"). United Overseas Bank - UOB - had not as yet opened its doors. The same applies to OUB - Overseas Union Bank - which much later, in the nineties, merged with UOB.

Prosecutorial discretion is an essential element of our criminal justice. This discretion vests in the Attorney-General as the Public Prosecutor and is constitutionally protected. Recently, there have been several challenges to the exercise of this discretion on the basis of alleged violation of the constitutionally protected right to equal treatment. This article examines the basis of the prosecutorial discretion and considers the value of developing prosecution guidelines to assist prosecutors in making decisions consistently and fairly.

Singapore's deposit insurance scheme was revised in 2011. This paper reviews the debate on the merits of a deposit insurance scheme, considers key features of the scheme operating in Singapore and evaluates how well it promotes the rationale of deposit insurance.

In the aftermath following the Asian financial crisis, theWorld Bank prescribed regulatory reforms as a remedy for weak financial fundamentals. These reforms reflect the claims of the strong form legal origins hypothesis that countries with common law legal traditions have stronger investor protection laws and better financial outcomes than countries of civil law origin. This paper seeks to test the legal origins hypothesis through an examination of the evolution of Malaysian shareholder protection from 1965 to 2010. Comparison with six other countries in the time series studies indicates that Malaysia had the highest growth in formal shareholder protection. Persistent borrowing from the regulations of other common law countries suggests that inherited legal tradition has, to an extent, influenced the evolution of Malaysian shareholder protection. The influence of other common law countries' regulations is explained by institutional complementarities, supporting the claims of the weak form legal origins hypothesis.

This article offers an overview and assessment of the laws relating to the protection of animals in Singapore and Malaysia. The focus is on identifying the interpretations of the statutory offences of cruelty that will best promote their objectives and effectiveness.