The English common law tort of passing off came into the spotlight in 2015 with the UK Supreme Court case of Starbucks (HK) Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Group settling the current position regarding the question of the territorial scope of goodwill. This article undertakes a comparative study of the tort with Section 18 of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code which, it argues, has been interpreted by the Thai Supreme Court to offer a materially similar remedy to the English tort in two important conceptual aspects: the requirement for misrepresentation and the so-called “hard line” approach to the territorial scope of goodwill, as affirmed by Starbucks. The analysis carries important implications for comparative lawyers and legislators in both the UK and Thailand, and challenges assumptions based on a simplistic categorization of Thailand as a civil law jurisdiction.

The Straits Settlements comprised a group of British territories located in the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It initially comprised Penang, Singapore, and Malacca, and was formed in 1826. Unlike Malacca which was a thriving city with a substantial Chinese community, Penang and Singapore were relatively uninhabited when the British arrived, but Chinese immigration to both territories swiftly took place and on a large scale. For much of the nineteenth century, British policy towards the Chinese community in the Straits was one of minimal governance. They were largely left to order their affairs privately and this suited the Chinese, who tended to be aloof from the machinery of government and were also unfamiliar with English law. While there were many positive aspects of such private ordering, some negative features included the manner in which secret societies evolved and the treatment of coolies. It was only when the colonial government introduced strong measures that these negative aspects were ameliorated.

In 2006, China enacted its first rescue-oriented Enterprise Bankruptcy Law with the aim of establishing its corporate rescue culture. But the corporate reorganization procedure that is at the heart of the new bankruptcy law has not been used frequently. It is appropriate to ask why the use of China’s new corporate rescue law has been so low. Meanwhile, in the existing corporate reorganizations under the 2006 Law, most debtors were excluded from the reorganization process, so that the Chinese new debtor-in-possession model, which seems to be a desirable control format, was largely shelved. Why so? This article explores these two issues through the use of empirical data collected from Zhejiang, a province with a significantly larger number of reorganizations than most other Chinese provinces.

This article explores horizontal non-discrimination rights under the Constitution of India (Indian Constitution). The Indian Constitution is unique in that it expressly prohibits private discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, caste, religion, etc. for the purpose of, inter alia, “access to … shops” (Article 15(2)). The article argues that a historically grounded understanding of the word “shops”, in the context of the transformative purposes of the Indian Constitution, necessitates a broad reading that covers all private economic transactions where goods and services are offered to the public at large. Furthermore, seemingly contrary Supreme Court precedent, if it is constitutionally justifiable, must be restricted to its own facts. In sum, Article 15(2) of the Indian Constitution provides a radical constitutional remedy that is directly horizontally applicable to private conduct, and goes far beyond remedies developed in other jurisdictions, which have often needed to turn to legislation in order to adequately combat private discrimination in the economic and social sphere.

This article offers a critical analysis of the human rights system established by ASEAN. It first investigates concrete evidence of the system’s ineffectiveness by comparing the cases of Myanmar and Thailand, which illustrate ASEAN’s failure to address human rights violations both before and after the creation of the ASEAN system. It then examines the substantive and procedural limitations of the ASEAN human rights instruments and mechanisms. Specifically, while restrictions on rights and freedoms contained in the instruments undermine the universality of human rights, ASEAN’s mechanisms lack independence and offer only weak protection mandates to address rights violations. In addition, the absence of a judicial body to hear complaints and issue binding remedies makes the system incomplete. The article recommends the creation of an ASEAN court of human rights and suggests changes to the existing instruments and mechanisms that might accommodate the new court.

This article draws on the common law of unjust enrichment to rationalize and develop the right to recover a non-gratuitously conferred benefit set out in section 71 of Malaysia’s Contracts Act 1950. This attempt at legal transplant and modern restatement is made in the hope of injecting principle and clarity into the antique section with the eventual goal of reviving it for practical and modern use.