When robots cause harm to people, who should be held responsible? The manufacturer might be accountable for defects in its design, while the user could be liable for the robot’s actions. But what about the robot itself? Should a machine ever bear legal responsibility for wrongdoing?
Our open-access co-edited book was published last year by Springer in their interdisciplinary Asia in Transition series, launched by the Attorney-Gerneral of Brunei and later the former Chief Justice of Western Australia. Despite many new legal instruments created to combat corruption, it remains serious across most parts of Asia, as outlined in the editors’ introduction and detailed across nine jurisdiction-specific chapters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, emergency measures for government procurement and economic management expanded opportunities for corruption and impacted enforcement activities. Overall corruption has persisted despite new national and international law instruments, and issues related to bribery and other serious illegal behaviour by foreign investors continue to emerge across Asia.
The prevailing orthodoxy is that when a fiduciary accepts a bribe, they hold it on an ‘institutional’ constructive trust for their principal. Given that English law does not recognise the ‘remedial’ constructive trust, ‘constructive trusts’ as used herein refers to the ‘institutional’ constructive trust unless otherwise stated. Much of the academic and judicial discussion has focused on whether this should be so, or whether the principal’s claim for the bribe should merely be a personal one. These discussions are often confined purely to equitable doctrines. However, a fiduciary’s corruption is not only equity’s problem, but also the concern of the State.
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?
The Singapore legislature introduced a set of refined and interlinked provisions in the Road Traffic Act 1961 (RTA), which came into force on 1 November 2019. These provisions were intended to deal better with cases in Singapore where motorists drove dangerously or carelessly while under influence of drink or drugs. However, these provisions when applied may give rise to an issue of double-counting in punishment, and the way in which the courts have applied these provisions is such that in some cases this double-counting is fully ameliorated while in other cases it is not.
Our Festschrift essay, published in the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review to honour Professor ATH Smith, addresses the current law and practice in England and Wales and in New Zealand relating to findings of consent or non-consent by P to interactions between D and P. Publication constraints required confining attention to interactions between competent adults. Neither could we discuss which activities are permissible on a menu of choices that any competent adult might make. Contested and divisive issues relating to radical choices such as the consensual infliction of serious bodily harm or ministering death to the terminally ill are not considered. Rather, our concern is with interactions between D and P, in circumstances where what D does is uncontestably lawful if done with P’s consent, yet otherwise unlawful. The cases and statutory rules discussed relate predominantly to criminal law but there is also discussion of the civil law of consent, especially in the context of crimes relating to financial and propriety wrongs.