Should Swearing be Punished by the Criminal Law?

Criminal Law

Australians have a reputation for laidback attitudes towards swearing. But did you know that across Australia, it is a crime to use offensive language in or near a public place?

Much of my research considers the relationship between language, power and the criminal law. In my recent article, ‘It might be powerful; but is it offensive? Unpacking judicial views on the c-word’, I consider the legal treatment of a common Australian swear word: ‘c___t’. My article asks two questions: Have societal attitudes towards this word changed in Australia? And if they have, how should its use be judged by the criminal law?

Autonomous Vehicles and Insurance Law Principles

Insurance Law, Law & Technology

The advent of autonomous vehicles (‘AVs’) will disruptively transform the motor insurance sector. Traditional motor insurance in Singapore rests on the public policy of ensuring adequate coverage for all victims in road accidents. With AVs challenging the orthodox foundations of motor insurance, however, existing insurance doctrines will have to evolve to grapple with unfamiliar risks. We examine this in our article ‘Autonomous Vehicles and Insurance Law Principles: Navigating New Frontiers in Singapore’ published in the Singapore Academy of Law Journal.

Pre-judgment Interest on Liquidated and Unliquidated Sums

Contract Law, Private Law

A creditor bringing an action will want interest too. Interest compensates for late payment. For the last 200 years, relief came from statutes. The common law did not recognize a right to pre-judgment interest. That position was relaxed in Sempra Metals v IRC [2008] 1 AC 561. Interest on debts and other claims for breach of contract were legitimised. Plaintiffs can now present claims for compound interest at common law, whereas statutory interest is always simple. Where the interval between cause of action and judgment is long and the sum is large, this is a superior option. In a recent Privy Council decision (Sagicor Bank Jamaica v YP Seaton[2022] UKPC 48), interest calculated on a compound basis was roughly 52 times greater than simple, and roughly 368 times the principal sum.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Reporting from an Environmentalist’s (Not Investor’s) Lens

Environmental Law

Environmental, social, and governance (‘ESG’) reporting is increasingly practiced by companies. But is ESG reporting good or bad for the environment? How might we even approach such a question? The investigation of this question lies at the heart of my paper, ‘[ESG] Reporting from an Environmentalist’s (Not Investor’s) Lens’, published in (2023) 47 Environs: Environmental Law and Policy Journal 52-104.

Leading Works on International Law: The International Law on Foreign Investment

Public International Law

Donna Lyons’s edited book, Leading Works on International Law, published at the end of 2023, has chapters by eleven authors describing works the editor had chosen as the leading works in international law published in recent times. The chapters on the works were written by the authors, making it an unusual collection in that each author was given an opportunity of stating how she or he came to write her or his work and what they considered to be the impact of their works. In a chapter titled ‘Battling Against Power: The International Law on Foreign Investment’, I was asked to describe the circumstances in which I wrote my book, The International Law on Foreign Investment (5th Edition, Cambridge University Press, London, 2021). In oriental traditions of scholarship, self-praise is to be avoided but it was, in this case, what I was required to do.

Paratexts and Authorship

Intellectual Property

The materiality of literature, and its implications on copyright law’s central categories of author and work, is a recurrent question in the theory and history of intellectual property. In my recent article ‘From Paratexts to Print Machinery’ published in Law and Critique, I attend to some peripheral matters of Immanuel Kant’s 1785 essay, ‘On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting’ (Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks), as indices of its medial-material conditions of possibility. This medial reading is guided by Gérard Genette’s notion of the paratext, defined as ‘what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public.’ Originally appearing in the May 1785 issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, Kant’s publication materially encompassed not only the epitextual background of the German Enlightenment, but also the peritextual features of catchwords, signature marks, and various front matter. I argue that the periodical was deeply involved in the operations of a print machinery preceding the authorial figure, the existence of which perturbs copyright law’s attachment to original authorship.

The Nature of Property in Cryptoassets

Law & Technology, Property Law

While cryptoassets have generally been accepted as a form of property in Commonwealth jurisdictions, it remains unclear how specific property rules apply. What is required for title to a cryptoasset to be legally transferred? Is a blockchain transaction necessary or sufficient for that purpose? If a transaction is unauthorised or procured by fraud, when (if ever) do subsequent purchasers take free of the original owner’s title? These questions are relevant, for example, to proprietary disputes in crypto litigation and the structuring of secured crypto-finance arrangements.

Justifying Concurrent Claims in Private International Law

Conflicts of Law

Should claimants be entitled to sue either in contract or tort (or both sans double recovery) on a single set of facts? In domestic law, the answer to this question – the question of concurrent liability – matters because obvious differences exist between contract and tort: different remoteness, remedial, and limitation rules apply, for example. Choosing between these claims allows claimants to maximise the chances and consequences of success. Is this justifiable?