The Singapore Law Review

From the Chief Editor
This will be the final issue of Juris for AY 2006/2007. What a great year it has been for the Singapore Law Review!

In October 2006, Professor Andrew Simester shared with a captive audience useful ideas for crafting effective essays during our Writing Workshop. In January 2007, the Writing Competition & Symposium returned after a short hiatus and our annual Lecture in March 2007 attracted one of the largest Lecture audiences ever! You can read more about the latter two events in this issue.

Publishing Juris has been both a rewarding and challenging undertaking for us – we had to juggle writing for Juris with organising other SLR events and our schoolwork. However, the notes of encouragement we received from illustrious members of the legal fraternity, including those from Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Law Professor Jayakumar and Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, have been a great source of motivation and encouragement for us.

In this issue, we also pay tribute to the late Professor R.H. Hickling, who passed on in February 2007. Professor Hickling, whom many students will remember with great fondness, taught at the Faculty in the 1970s. He was also the first Parliamentary draftsman and Law Revision Commissioner of Malaysia.

To all Juris readers and our sponsor WongPartnership – thank you for your support. My deepest appreciation to our Advisors and Law Faculty staff for their invaluable advice and encouragement over the years. Also, a special thank you to our events’ sponsors and all Law Faculty students who have enthusiastically participated in our many activities.

Lastly, my heartfelt gratitude to all my fellow SLR members – your commitment and diligence have made it possible for SLR to continue with its publications and organisation of meaningful events. It has been my honour and privilege working with you.

I hope that Juris will continue to grow and be your forum for a fruitful discussion of legal issues.

Maureen Poh
Chief Editor, Singapore Law Review (more…)

A distinguished administrator, professor and lawyer, best known for his hand in drafting the Internal Security Act (ISA) and Malaya’s Federal Constitution, has passed away. Professor Reginald Hugh Hickling, always affectionately known to those who knew him as Hugh, died on February 11 in Worchestershire, Britain at the age of 86. But as many would attest, he lived a life that few could compare with.

Prof. Hickling’s respect for the law was ingrained at a young age. Born in Derby, England in 1920 to a police officer, he soon became the youngest then to have qualified for the LL.B from Nottingham University. He was also seen to be a loyal and dutiful individual, signing up for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves when World War II broke out. His wartime experiences included serving with a PQ17 on a corvette where his convoy was badly mutilated and Hickling was upset that they could not stop to pick up the survivors in the water. He later commanded a Landing Craft Tank at Sword Beach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

Prof. Hickling resumed his legal career post-war and served in various offices in Asia. At the time of Malayan independence, he was Malaya’s first Parliamentary draftsman and Commissioner of Law Revision, helping to draft the Malayan Constitution, the Merdeka declaration and the National Land Code. Some of us may also remember him as a visiting professor to the Faculty of Law at the then-University of Singapore during the periods of 1974-6 and 1978-80. It is also fitting to recall, 21 years down the road, that the kind professor delivered the 3rd Singapore Law Review Lecture in 1986 on “Breaking the apron strings”. Above all, Prof. Hickling was a warm, conscientious man with a wonderful sense of humour and humility. “He had a fantastic sense of humour,” recalled Dr. Mehrun Siraj, his student at the London School of Oriental and African Studies in the early 1970s. “He would tell these wonderful stories and then give out a hearty laugh, sort of a guffaw. Hickling was able to laugh at himself.” Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi, who shared his love of constitutional law, described Prof. Hickling as more than just a legal scholar but also a “philosopher and a very good man.”

He was often seen to carry an age-worn book containing his handwritten collection of fascinating quips, phrase and poems – amongst them even simple child’s poems. In this, Prof. Hickling showed despite all the knowledge and wealth we might acquire, we should never forget the simple things in life.

And that he never did. His former student Sazlin Suhaila Daud recalled how at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in the 1990s, he would drive up in a “decrepit light-metallic green 1970s-80s Peugeot and after a few years, resorted instead to travelling by public transport, which 99% of the time meant rickety, overcrowded public buses and not taxis.”

Prof. Hickling was also a prolific writer, having numerous titles to his name. Some were, naturally, books on law, while others were novels including Crimson Sun over Borneo, about the Japanese invasion of South-East Asia, Festival of Hungry Ghosts, about the lives of British expatriates engaged in Singapore, and The Lotus-eaters, which is set in a fictitious law faculty in Malaysia.

In Memoir of a Wayward Lawyer, his autobiography published in 2000, Prof. Hickling described his time in the law as a “splendid journey” and that he finally understood the law as part of “man’s efforts to live harmoniously in society”. He also affords a striking quip that lets us a little into the mind and philosophy of this great man – “Until the world knows peace, law is essential.”

A personal friend and former colleague of his once said, “Those of us who lived under his humble legacy learnt to care for what is most valuable in our common lives.” Such was the insatiable impact that Hugh had on those who knew him and such was his legend.

Jeth Lee is a second year law undergraduate and the Juris Editor. — Juris Illuminae Vol. 3 Issue 5 (March/April 2007)

The Singapore Law Review (SLR) Writing Competition & Symposium returned in AY 2006/2007 after a brief hiatus. The theme of the Competition was “Legal Developments in a Changing World”. We decided on this broad theme because we wanted to give students the greatest flexibility to write on any topic they wanted, in order to encourage as many students as possible to submit their essays. Well, it worked! We received entries from Law undergraduate, graduate and exchange students. There were so many entries that we had a hard time selecting the finalists. After much debate, we finally selected our six finalists, who had to present and defend their essays in front of a panel of judges and audience. The six essays discussed very current and interesting topics, including preventive detention, Islamic law and human rights issues.

The presentations were held in mid-February just before the Lunar New Year. This meant that all finalists were assured of a nice ‘ang pow’ even before the New Year festivities began! The judges for the presentation were Mr Oon and Mr Bazul, partners from sponsoring firm T S Oon & Bazul. Professor Michael Hor and constitutional law expert Dr. Kevin Tan, both SLR Advisors, completed the panel.

Each finalist gave a 10-minute presentation, following which the judges and audience grilled them, oftentimes rather mercilessly it seemed, on their essays. This “intellectual thrust and parry” not only gave the finalists the opportunity to dazzle all present with their scintillating arguments, it also provided a highly exciting and entertaining show for the audience!

Everyone then enjoyed a sumptuous buffet dinner beside the Upper Quadrangle, which looked particularly beautiful that night. Good food, great company, a stunning, moonlit campus – what a wonderful way to end the SLR Writing Competition & Symposium!

After over 2 hours of stimulating presentations and intense debates, Ms Eunice Chua (LLB ’07) emerged the champion. Her essay, titled An Analysis of How The Singapore, United Kingdom and American Judiciary Give Voice To The Law In The Face Of (Counter) Terrorism won her the top prize of $1000. Mr Emmanuel Cai (LLB ’08) clinched the 1st runner-up prize of $500 with his essay on the subject of knowing receipt – Knowing, Dishonest or plain Unjust? A Commentary on the Past Present and Future of Knowing Receipt. Mr Teo Jin Huang (LLB ’08) (Preserving the Legal Order in Times of Emergency: Should State responses to emergencies ever be extra-constitutional?) and Mr Yang Ziliang (LLB ’08) (Preventive Detention As A Counter-Terrorism Strategy: They Have Stopped Using It And So Should We) were both 2nd runner-ups, receiving $250 each. Rounding up the prize winners were 3rd runner-ups Mr Leonardo Bernard (LLM ’07) (A New Look on Human Rights Through The Eyes of Islam) and Mr Ang Hou Fu (LLB ’10), the only first year student who wrote A Test of Fire: Re-looking Mistake in Contract. They won $100 each. Al the winning entries will be published in the next issue of the Singapore Law Review Journal – watch out for it!

We would like to thank our Advisors, Professor Michael Hor and Dr Kevin Tan for taking time off their busy schedules to judge the Competition.

We are very grateful to T S Oon & Bazul for their very generous sponsorship, without which the SLR Writing Competition & Symposium would not have been possible. Thank you!

T S Oon & Bazul started out primarily as a boutique shipping and admiralty practice. Besides litigation, it also advises on non-contentious matters such as joint venture agreements, pooling agreements, terminal service agreements, ship financing, ship sale and purchase transactions, ship building contracts, charterparties and bills of lading. T S Oon & Bazul has also broadened its areas of practice, and now regularly acts for clients in the fields of aviation, banking, trade finance, international trade, marine insurance, re-insurance, professional indemnity insurance, co-insurance, construction and insolvency.

For those who are interested in finding out more about the firm or doing an internship with the firm, please send your inquiries by email to: general@oonbazul.com. You can also find out more about the firm at its website: www.oonbazul.com

Juris Illuminae Vol. 3 Issue 5 (March/April 2007)

In this special interview, Juris talks to James Mendelssohn, Chief Executive, MSI, for his take on the opportunities available to mid-sized firms and the young lawyer who joins them today.

Q: Legal work is becoming increasingly global. Many transactions involve both local and regional or international aspects. What can smaller law firms do to ensure that they remain profitable and competitive in such a challenging environment?
For smaller law firms, the key to success is networking. For instance, if you are a mid-sized law firm in Singapore and your client says “I am thinking of opening a business in Tokyo”, rather than saying “I cannot help you because my area of expertise is limited to Singapore”, you can tell your client that “I belong to a network of high-quality, like-minded firms that share the same size and philosophy, and I can link up with them to satisfy your request”. So there is an alternative to going to a very big firm. You could also highlight to your client that he would be an important client to you, rather than a small client in a big firm.

While such networking has been going on for some time, there has been a huge growth in popularity and interest in the last few years. This has been driven by two factors. One is that it is so much easier to do business internationally now. The entrepreneur in Singapore has come to realize that it is important to expand his business overseas. The second factor is that there is a growing disaffection with anything large. More people are trying to source good services from the smaller, more specialist providers than the massive ones.

MSI is one such network. We are a global network comprising 250 independent high-quality mid-sized law and accounting firms in 100 countries.

Q: Why should a student consider working in asmaller law firm?
If you are a student who has just left university and want to be a good lawyer, you of course hope to obtain a good depth and breadth of experience. If you are at a very big firm, the risk is that you would be a small part of a large team working on a particular point in a particular project for months. You may not even understand what the whole project is.

Whereas if you are in a smaller firm, you would get much more responsibility to work on client matters because the issues would be smaller. As a student making a choice, you may have to strike a balance between name, reputation, CV and work-life balance against quality of work.

But the choice is not as stark as that. There are smaller firms which may be part of a network like MSI. In these firms, the typical client would be smaller and you would get that real responsibility and breadth of experience, but you would also not be restricted to working exclusively on a small local matter. By being part of a network, these smaller firms would get work from overseas.

I think students should broaden their outlook and know what their options are when they are making a choice. There is a credible and worthwhile life outside the “magic circle” law firms. The quality of work, breadth of experience and reputation is also present in smaller law firms, and they are a viable option for students.

Q: How can young lawyers add value and be an asset to their firms?
Take some trouble to get to know your clients. If you are working with a client, do not just look at the files and focus merely on the legal aspects of the case. Try to understand who they are, know what they are doing and why they are doing it. People love talking about their own business, and talking to them establishes trust. You want your client to chat with you. This is much easier if you’re a more important and bigger part of providing a service to the client.

To find out more on MSI and what it does, please visit its website at www.msi-network.com

Ang Houfu is a first year law undergraduate and associate editor of the Review. – Juris Illuminae Vol. 3 Issue 5 (March/April 2007)

Can Intellectual Property (IP) ethics be taught? How precarious is the position of home-users now? Do the authorities have the right to monitor what I do in my personal space? How many pieces of music and videos can I download before I cross the threshold of liability?

These topics of discussion were bounced about in the 20th Annual Singapore Law Review Lecture: A Panel Discussion on “Music, Video & Movie File Sharing: Trends & Implications”. The spotlight was thrown on the development of IP law in Singapore, with a particular focus on the how IP laws impact the conduct of netizens in cyberspace. It was a timely forum aimed at discussing a dynamic area of law which is set to have a wide-reaching effect on the IT community.

Graced by Attorney-General Chao Hick Tin and sponsored by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), the Lecture was attended by practising lawyers, NUS students, Junior College students as well as other members of the legal fraternity. The 20th Lecture took on a slightly different tone this year with an interactive panel discussion chaired by guest speakers Mr Steven Ang (Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University), Mr Bryan Tan (Director of Keystone Law Corporation) and Ms Elaine Leong (Senior Assistant Director and Legal Counsel at the Copyright Department in IPOS). Ms Chiam Lu Lin, Assistant Director-General, Legal Counsel and Deputy Registrar of the Registries Division of IPOS kicked off the Lecture with an entertaining and informative speech on the importance of protecting IP rights and IPOS’ role in IP policy-making & regulation.

Coming from different angles of the IP field with often diverging viewpoints regarding the governance of IP law, the panelists offered the audience a variety of views that added much colour to the discussion. Interesting questions which sprang from the audience reflected the curiosity of people in IP law as well as the potential heralded by this particular field of law. Exactly how much copying is too much? Is there a disconnection between the law and the wants of the people? Can importance of the protection of IP rights ever penetrate the public consciousness? There were no perfectly certain answers and neither was there a need for such in the energy-charged healthy exchange of ideas that triggered much thought even after the end of the session. Regardless of the various controversies surrounding the topic, everyone walked away with a firm notion of the bottom-line: Be held back not only by the consequences, but more importantly the appreciation for the owner of the intellectual property you are manipulating.

The evening of conviviality and vivacious forum indeed provided a chance for people from all walks of life to converge and discuss a legal development that beholds much anticipation.

Inaugurated in 1984 with generations of track record, the SLR Lecture has yet closed another chapter of its illustrious history. See you at the 21st Annual SLR Lecture, 2008!

Tan An Qi is a first year law undergraduate and the Deputy Juris editor. – Juris Illuminae Vol. 3 Issue. 5 (March/April 2007)

The keynote event of the year for the Singapore Law Review, the Singapore Law Review Lecture ended on 29 Mar 2007. The longest running lecture series on Law in Singapore adopted a different approach for this year’s topic: “Music, Video & Movie File Sharing: Trends & Implications”. Featuring a panel discussion for the first time, the packed audience, which not only included students from the Law faculty and NUS, but also from Junior Colleges and other institutes of higher learning, took little time to express their views and direct burning questions at our distinguished panellists. Undoubtedly a topic of great interest to students, everyone took away from the lecture a greater understanding of the law related to file sharing and the issues that surround it.

This year’s Lecture was sponsored by IPOS. Do look out for the final issue of Juris for the academic year, which would be released very soon.