Dear Law School and Friends,
As SLR belatedly welcomes you to the start of 2012, we bring to you articles touching on topics varying from football regulations to SOPA. We have also included a speech given by Mr Stephen Townley, a foreign consultant with KhattarWong LLP, in this issue. The speech touches on the future role that Singapore may have in developing sports law and makes for an interesting read, especially for those who are particularly interested in the area of sports law and regulations. We hope that you enjoy this issue, …

The following is an extract from a speech delivered to a focused audience including government representatives, law officers, sports governing bodies and athletes looking at the future role that Singapore may have in developing sports law as the sports industry evolves in the region.

What is sport?
Sport is a competition with an unpredictable result.  The competition may be against oneself or others. Its tribal nature is often most evident with competitions involving teams, clubs or nations.  It is capable of defining a country, region or city.  Indeed there is no …

By Royston Tan
It was 27 September 2011. Despite the continuous falling of rain on this cold and stormy night, the atmosphere was eclectic inside the Allianz Arena, a seventy-thousand seater stadium in the heart of Munich, Germany. Most of the fans were on cloud nine, as the home team, FC Bayern Munich was leading English club Manchester City Football Club two to nil.
With just a little under twenty minutes to go, Manchester City’s team manager Roberto Mancini decided to call upon the team’s talismanic striker, Carlos Tevez to change the …

By Momoko Kanda
If United States’ government has anything to say about it, they certainly will. The media has been abuzz about the recent bills being debated in the United States House and Senate: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) respectively. These bills intend to allow the U.S. Attorney General to seek a court order against foreign websites in jurisdictions which may be more tolerant of copyright infringement laws and make them disappear. The mechanism by which the websites will disappear is through the Internet …

By Xiao Hongyu
The “Guantanamo Bay” file leak in April, revealing that of the 212 Afghans at the base, “almost half were … entirely innocent or transferred to Guantanamo with no reason for doing so on file”[1] demolished ex-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that those detained in Cuba were “the worst of the worst”. Some of the detainees simply had the bad luck to be in the wrong place the wrong time; others were detained on grounds that proved to be entirely baseless.
While the US continues to grapple with the …