Why Singapore Needs a Digital Dollar

Banking and Finance

The increasing popularity of digital tokens has raised concerns among central banks worldwide, leading them to explore the concept of a digital version of central bank money. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is no exception, and it has been actively studying the potential benefits and risks associated with a digital version of the Singapore dollar (digital SGD). My article published in the Banking and Finance Law Review (volume 39, page 381) delves into the potential impact of a digital SGD on the public’s choices for store of value and conducting payment transactions, the funding model of the banking industry, and the monetary policy operations of MAS. It revisits fundamental topics such as the existing types of official money, bank funding models, central banks’ authority to issue banknotes, and the concept of legal tender while discussing the changes that a digital SGD would bring. The conclusion is that introducing a digital SGD would yield net positive effects, encouraging MAS to modernize its currency system to align with the evolving digital landscape in financial markets.

Consent in Modern Criminal Law

Criminal Law

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.

Should Determinations of Trade Mark Similarity Consider Their Distinctiveness Acquired From Being Used in the Market?

Intellectual Property

The vast majority of trade mark disputes – whether they involve opposition, infringement or revocation proceedings – involve the same threshold question: are the competing marks similar or dissimilar? Only if the marks-similarity assessment yields a positive result can the registered proprietor of a trade mark proceed with his case to show that the other legal requirements set out in the relevant provision of the Trade Marks Act (e.g. whether the goods or services involved are identical or similar, and whether there is a likelihood of consumer confusion) have been satisfied.

Concordance Legalization: An Alternative Regional Trading Arrangement to the EU and USMCA Models

ASEAN

My article “Intergovernmental Yet Dynamically Expansive: Concordance Legalization as an Alternative Regional Trading Arrangement in ASEAN and Beyond” published in the European Journal of International Law conceptualizes the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) integration model, which I term ‘Concordance Legalization’. This is amid the regional trading arrangement landscape that holds two contrasting models epitomized by the European Union (EU) and the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). Concordance Legalization may offer sovereignty-centric states, especially those in the Global South, a ‘third way’ to regionalize dynamically whilst retaining intergovernmental preferences.

The Tragedy of AI Governance

Competition Law, International Law, Law & Technology

Despite hundreds of guides, frameworks, and principles intended to make artificial intelligence (AI) ‘ethical’ or ‘responsible’, ever more powerful applications continue to be released ever more quickly. Safety and security teams are being downsized or sidelined to bring AI products to market. And a significant portion of AI developers apparently believe there is a real risk that their work poses an existential threat to humanity.

Methodological Proposals for a Pluralist Institutional Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

Comparative Law, Public Law

What methodological implications should follow if we are to adopt a truly pluralist institutional approach to studying constitutional interpretation? This is the question we sought to address in our award-winning article ‘What would a pluralist institutional approach to constitutional interpretation look like? Some methodological implications’ published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON). In this article, we first advanced the argument that there is a need to take on a broader pluralist perspective when studying constitutional interpretation.

Shareholder Engagement in East Asia

Banking and Finance, Corporate Law

Little has been written in the legal literature about hedge fund activism in major East Asian markets. To fill this literature gap, my chapter entitled ‘Shareholder Engagement in East Asia’, forthcoming in Board-Shareholder Dialogue: Policy Debate, Legal Constraints and Best Practices (Luca Enriques and Giovanni Strampelli eds, Cambridge University Press), aims to take an empirical and comparative approach to examining hedge fund activism in the three major East Asian markets of mainland China, South Korea and Japan.

Data Protection Liability in the Employment Context

Data Protection

This blog post highlights my article ‘Employer Liability and the Employee Exemption’ published in the PDP Digest 2022 relating to the allocation of data protection liability in the employment context. In that article, I discuss how the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (‘PDPA’) allocates liability between an employer and an employee, when the employee does something that constitutes a breach of a data protection obligation under the PDPA (for example, where the employee discloses the personal data of an individual without having obtained prior consent from that individual, in breach of the Consent Obligation under section 13 of the PDPA).

Vaccination and Governing through Contagion

Law & Society

In a recent article ‘Smallpox Vaccination and the Limits of Governing through Contagion in the Straits Settlements, 1868-1926’ published in Law & Policy, my co-author Jack Jin Gary Lee and I examine the social regulation of contagious diseases and its impact through the case of smallpox vaccination, the first modern, systematic, state-driven attempt to build population immunity.