ISSN (Print): 0218-2173
ISSN (Digital/websites): 3029-1216
Editors: Sandra Annette BOOYSEN National University of Singapore and Christian WITTING National University of Singapore
The Singapore Journal of Legal Studies has been in continuous publication since 1959 when it first appeared as the University of Malaya Law Review. Institutional changes made it necessary for the Journal to be re-named twice, first as the Malaya Law Review and then as the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. Together with its predecessors, the Journal is one of the oldest law journals in the British Commonwealth. As the first and leading law journal in Singapore, it has witnessed the legal, political and social development of Singapore as the country progressed from its establishment in 1965 to the financial and commercial centre it is today. >> Read More
*The SJLS website is currently being upgraded. Pieces that have been individually e-published ahead of the issue as a whole, can be accessed using the "First View Articles" tab. To search previously published issues, please use the "All Issues" tab. Please contact us at lawsjls@nus.edu.sg if you require assistance.*
Highlights
"The Impact of AI and New Technologies on Corporate Governance and Regulation"
[Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-17
Article based on the public lecture delivered as the Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visitor Lecture, August 2023.
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Highlights of the lecture can be found here.
On 22 August 2023, Professor Martin Petrin delivered a lecture titled “Impact of AI and New Technologies on Corporate Governance and Regulation” at the Wee Chong Jin Moot Court located in NUS Law’s Bukit Timah Campus.
Against the backdrop of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies increasingly influencing the business models and structures of corporations, the lecture focused on what those changes mean for selected aspects of corporate theory, governance, and regulation.
Professor Petrin’s lecture first engaged with intra-corporate effects of technology and whether AI may take over corporate management, subsequently turning to impacts on external relationships between corporations, markets and individuals.
Miranda Stewart
"The Future of Tax Jurisdiction"
[Mar 2024 Online] Sing JLS 1-23
Article based on the author’s Sal Pat Khattar public lecture on 17 February 2022
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This lecture explores the history and future of tax jurisdiction in a global digital era. Tax jurisdiction is a function of state capacity, technology and politics. It reflects changing labour and capital relations and only partly depends on territorial boundaries. Tax concepts of residence and source have changed over time as the capability to tax mobile consumption, labour and capital changes. Governments extend or retract tax jurisdiction over income, entities and activities outside their territory. Tax jurisdiction is changed by cooperation between states, which has grown significantly in the last decade, although states continue to compete in some important respects. This lecture considers some examples of the evolution of tax jurisdiction including the recent global deal for taxation of multinational enterprises
Jeanne C Fromer
“Trade Mark Ownfringement”
[2023] Sing JLS 342
Article based on the public lecture delivered as the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business Distinguished Visitor in Intellectual Property, January 2023.
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Highlights of the lecture on Youtube can be found here.
On 9 January 2023, Walter J. Derenberg Professor Jeanne Fromer from NYU School of Law delivered the 4th EW Barker Centre for Law & Business (EWBCLB) Distinguished Visitor in Intellectual Property Lecture at Bukit Timah Campus. In the audience were Professor Paul Davies (Oxford), Professor Martin Senftleben (Amsterdam), Associate Professor Vicki Huang (Deakin), Mr Tony Yeo (Managing Director of Intellectual Property, Drew & Napier), Mr Lau Kok Keng (Head of Intellectual Property, Sports & Gaming, Rajah & Tann), Mr Tan Tee Jim (Head of Intellectual Property, Lee & Lee), Ms Sandy Widjaja and Mr Gavin Foo (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore). Professor David Tan, Head (Intellectual Property) of EWBCLB at NUS Law, facilitated a discussion after the lecture.
The lecture, titled “Trademark Ownfringement”, focused on how in recent years, trademark owners have increasingly been acting very similarly to those they accuse of infringement or dilution of their marks. Professor Fromer calls them “ownfringers”. For example, fashion companies Gucci and Balenciaga recently engaged in a collaboration of sorts—the “Hacker Project”—in which they each spliced the other’s marks and signature aspects into their fashion items. As a result, Gucci’s double-G logo appears all over Balenciaga’s Hourglass bag, while a logo with double-B’s (for Balenciaga) that otherwise looks like Gucci’s appears with the red-and-green Gucci stripe on tote bags. Were a third party to have done this, Gucci and Balenciaga would reasonably be shouting about consumer confusion and trademark infringement. Previously unheard-of collaborations between businesses in distinct spaces are also proliferating, such as between Adidas footwear with Lego brick details, fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana and Smeg appliances, and Ikea home goods and fashion company Off-White.
Andrew Phang
Review Article: "On Beauty, Scholarship, and Function - The Lessons From, and Importance of, Legal History in the Development of the Law of Marine Insurance"
[2023] Sing JLS 420
Review article by Senior Judge and former Justice of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Singapore, of Rob Merkin KC’s book: Marine Insurance – A Legal History.
Abstract
A few words of explanation at the outset are perhaps necessary - if nothing else than to explain the apparently cryptic title of this review essay. What in fact began as a somewhat straightforward review of a book on the history of marine insurance took a wholly unexpected turn and morphed into a general essay on the beauty, scholarship and function of legal history as viewed through the lenses of marine insurance. Indeed, in addition to being a magisterial two-volume history of the law of marine insurance, the present work demonstrates - in the most vividly possible way - at least three fundamental aspects (or, more accurately, benefits) of legal history as a whole.
Graeme B Dinwoodie
“Trade Mark Law as a Normative Project”
[2023] Sing JLS 305
Article based on the public lecture delivered as the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business Distinguished Visitor in April 2022.
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Highlights of the lecture can be found here.
On 5 April 2022, Professor Graeme Dinwoodie delivered the 3rd EW Barker Centre for Law & Business (EWBCLB) Distinguished Visitor in Intellectual Property Lecture, titled “Trademark Law as a Normative Project” at the NUS Bukit Timah Campus.
Professor Dinwoodie offered provocative perspectives on how a more normative engagement of issues of distinctiveness and the likelihood of confusion is important for trademark law. Professor Dinwoodie said: “The characterization of the likely confusion inquiry as empirical obscures unavoidable antecedent normative questions. … Survey evidence is routinely characterized by U.S. courts as the best evidence of likely confusion. … But, as has come to be understood by courts in many other countries such the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia, surveys might, at best, be unhelpful for any number of reasons. They increase the costs of litigation, which creates its own distortions on the ability to establish and defend rights.” He further contended that “concealing normative policy choices as empirical findings creates risks” and that “our search for a better trademark law will require instead that we continue to imagine openly a more normative regime.”.
Kevin Y.L. Tan
"Tan Yock Lin (1953-2023)"
[2023] Sing JLS 217
Obituary
Abstract
The 7th of July 2023 was a terrible day for colleagues at the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law ("NUS Law"). It was the day when a dark pall descended upon the Faculty, as we were shocked and stunned by the news that our dear colleague, Yock Lin, had been tragically plucked from our midst in a fatal road accident. Even now, sitting here and writing this, I find his loss unfathomable.
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