Two recent Hong Kong cases have highlighted the developing dissonance between family law norms in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions. The first entailed a challenge to the Hong Kong Director of Immigration’s refusal to recognize an overseas same-sex civil partnership as analogous to marriage. The second concerned a parental order for a child born overseas as a result of a surrogacy arrangement to an unmarried commissioning couple. These two cases challenged a specific conceptualization of the family in Hong Kong law: a preference for a heterosexual, married couple as the basis for the family unit. However, other common law jurisdictions would recognize the applicants’ claims to family status, as do international human rights principles. This article explores the scope and intersection of Hong Kong’s family law values, its private international law obligations, and the potential for invoking the public policy exception in these cases. In doing so, it tests the extent to which Hong Kong law’s conceptualization of the “Ideal Family” can be legitimately imposed to oust the claims of the “Other Family” to legal recognition.

Countries across the world expanded digital surveillance strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic occurred contemporaneously with a global trend toward greater digital repression, commentators advanced the notion that China would use the health crisis to promote a technology-enabled form of authoritarian governance abroad. This article surveys the evidence for these claims by first examining the literature on the increase of digital surveillance associated with China and then presenting three case studies from developing countries with varying responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The selected countries – Brazil, South Africa and Vietnam – used surveillance technology as part of their pandemic response and have either been influenced by Chinese approaches or adopted Chinese technology in recent years. Examining these case studies allows us to better understand claims regarding China's role in the general spread of digital surveillance and the interplay between Chinese state objectives and local political environments. Crucially, we illustrate how China's engagement in digital governance abroad is heavily contingent on domestic environments. Against a backdrop of China's growing influence in global digital governance, the effects observed in these case studies of Chinese surveillance models and technology proliferating through pandemic management are diffuse and contextualised by local factors.

The significance of food is beyond its gastronomic value. Food symbolises a community's enriched past and holds cultural expressions and traditional knowledge. The linkage of food with religious beliefs, geo-climatic factors, social standards, and various health benefits builds the reputation of the food, which is essentially attributable to its geographic origin. Following the ratification of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the contracting states that have enacted Geographical Indications (GI) legislation (particularly those in Asia) have come forward to protect foodstuffs as GI in order to safeguard their communities and their traditional knowledge associated with foodstuffs. Against this background, the present article attempts to compare foodstuff GIs in eight selected Asian countries with a sui generis system of GI protection as TRIPS compliance. The comparative analysis of the evolution and scope of foodstuff protection, pre-registration and post-registration impact, and quality maintenance provides important insights into convergence and divergence among the selected Asian countries. The study further identifies policy implications for the sustenance of GI.

In Thailand, the concept of corporate criminal liability is commonly identified with significant theoretical and practical uncertainties. Only limited attention, however, has been devoted to the notion's historical roots in English legal transfers. This article examines the relevant legislation, court cases, academic literature, and other records. It carves out the continuous English influence on Thai corporate crime doctrine and highlights the legal irritation that occurred along the way. It argues that irritation was not automatic but driven by the Supreme Court, whose choices were shaped by decades of English impact on Thai legal education and practice. The article thereby highlights the dynamics between legal transfers and local drivers of legal development. It expands the growing research on the continued relevance of English law in Thailand and concludes with an outlook on the future of Thai corporate crime doctrine.

“Pro bono” is a familiar phrase in North American jurisdictions that generally refers to a lawyer’s provision of free legal services to indigent persons. The phrase “pro bono” has also come to imply a particular approach to a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons, one that stresses the obligatory as opposed to the charitable nature of the services provided. To what extent has this phrase, and its conceptualisation of a lawyer’s role, been used in Asian jurisdictions? This article examines how one Asian jurisdiction, Singapore, conceptualises a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons by examining newspaper usage of phrases describing legal services for indigent persons. The article argues that changes in usage over time, from free legal services and legal aid to inclusion of pro bono, coupled with increased discussions of access to justice, represent a shift to a more obligatory concept of indigent legal services. An obligatory conceptualisation potentially exerts greater pressure on lawyers to provide indigent legal services, but can also exert pressure to revise the historical lack of broad-based government funded criminal legal aid in Singapore.

Since 11 September 2001, international law and the community it governs are at a crossroads. While the world appears to be besieged by terrorist threats from non-state actors such as the Al-Qaeda, there is also a substantial risk of super-power unilateralism and arrogance. Amidst these crises, South-Asia occupies a sensitive and vulnerable position. The region is also beset with ethnic, religious, and domestic political conflicts which provide substantial threats to regional peace and security. Against the backdrop of the enormous complications faced by South Asia, the present article considers the role of international and regional institutions in developing forums for establishing peace and security for the region, as well greater promotion of human rights. A particular focus is upon the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which, it is contended, is an organisation capable of providing a suitable platform for peaceful dialogue within South-Asia.

The increasing integration of regional markets in Southeast Asia has led to the need for a regional framework for financial consumer protection. Access to affordable redress mechanisms is essential for consumer confidence in ASEAN’s burgeoning regional financial markets. Drawing on established channels of regional cooperation among ASEAN Member States, this article proposes a framework based on international best practices and existing financial consumer dispute resolution mechanisms in ASEAN 5 countries. It explores the need for cross-border cooperation to facilitate the effective resolution of financial consumer disputes arising from cross-border transactions. Key proposals include requiring ASEAN CIS passport operators to submit to the jurisdiction of host country financial consumer alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. The ASEAN Committee on Consumer Protection, with its contact points in each Member State and website on available consumer redress mechanisms across ASEAN, provides a platform for the strengthening of cross-border cooperation and facilitating financial consumer access to affordable redress in cross-border transactions.

The behaviour of appellate courts has long fascinated scholars. Specifically, scholars have been attentive to the effect of the political context on judicial outcomes. This paper focuses on the decision-making of the Philippine Supreme Court (“Court”) over multiple decades with particular attention to the influence of changes in the executive branch on the outcomes of cases brought to the Court. The analysis evaluates the decisions of the Court from 1970 through 2000, encompassing the turmoil of the Marcos years through the first few years of the tumultuous tenure of Joseph Estrada. We test the hypothesis, grounded in Galanter’s seminal work, that the government has substantial advantages in the legal system and thus enjoys greater success than other litigants. The government has theoretically unlimited resources with which to litigate, control over the staffing of the bench, and authority over, or at least major influence on, the laws that the courts interpret. As a result, the government is expected to win the majority of the challenges that come before the Court. The Philippines provides an excellent laboratory to test this thesis. In the Marcos era the Court faced a dictator professing “constitutional authoritarianism” whose regime ultimately was toppled by the People Power Revolution. His successor, Corazon Aquino, was initially embraced as the popular wife of an assassinated hero, Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., but later faced a series of attempts to topple her regime. President Fidel Ramos served for 6 years leading the nation through a period of economic growth. Elected by a wide margin in 1998, President Joseph Estrada quickly lost the confidence of the Filipino people as well as the business and military sectors. By 2001, he was removed from office through political actions which some consider the People Power II. This analysis evaluates the winners and losers before the Philippine Supreme Court across the tenures of these presidencies with particular focus on the ability of the Filipino government to succeed when compared to individuals and businesses and the success of different regimes over time as the executive’s popularity surges and wanes. The results suggest, that like other institutions, the Philippine Supreme Court responded to the rise and fall of the personal politics that dominates the distribution of power in this Asian archipelago.

This article examines why Japan is a prominent exception to the global trend towards recognition of same-sex marriage and evaluates the prospects for change. It does so through an analysis of five cases brought on Valentine's Day – 14 February 2019. Unlike many jurisdictions where religious opposition to same-sex relationships has been intense and sometimes violent, Japan has a history of relative tolerance towards LGBT individuals. Nonetheless, despite the creation of civil partnership ordinances in some localities, national legislation seems unlikely, and a group of lawyers filed suit in five district courts across Japan. The litigation was brought under the State Redress Act and is based on tort rather than directly on constitutional doctrine. It claims that marriage equality is constitutionally required and that the failure of the government to recognize same-sex marriage constitutes a tort that has harmed the LGB plaintiffs and entitles them to compensation. This article analyzes the nature of the cause of action founded on the State Redress Act, and examines the arguments, which are based more on the plaintiffs’ suffering than on their desire for self-expression. Subsequently, it presents and evaluates the possible outcomes

Legal academics were once thought to be parasitic on the work of judges, so much so that citing academic work was said to weaken a judgment's authority. Recent times have however seen prominent academics appointed to the highest courts, and judicial engagement with academic materials appears to have increased. In this light, this article empirically studies academic citation practices in the Singapore High Court. Using a dataset of 2,772 first-instance High Court judgments, we show that citation counts have indeed increased over time. This increase was distributed across most legal areas, and was not limited to, though more pronounced in, judgments authored by judges with post-graduate law degrees. Books, not journal articles, have consistently accounted for the bulk of the court's citations. The study sheds new statistical light on the evolving relationship between judges and academics, particularly in the context of an Asian, first-instance court.

Pandemics have a history of interrupting civilisations. From the Greeks and Romans to the British Empire, pandemics have eroded political authority and caused economic instability. The twenty-first century has been hailed as the ‘Asian century’, with China's ascent as central to a reconfiguration of global capital and power. The COVID-19 pandemic, that began in 2019 and still rages as of this writing, started in China and was exacerbated by initial repression by the local government authorities before the central government could implement appropriate disaster response. Since then, COVID-19 has been one of the most devastating pandemics in the history of globalisation. Its mortality has been coupled with regulatory responses which at times have been debilitating to national economies, no less is this true for China's own regulatory response which has been anomalous across the world. This Special Issue explores the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Chinese overseas direct investment and the concomitant forms of capital (symbolic, social, and political). It features collaborative research and writing by early career experts from throughout the world, as part of the ‘China, Law and Development’ project, based at the University of Oxford. It examines how China, its trade partners, and transnational orders have responded to the pandemic through law and regulation across an array of fields: dispute resolution, legal services, immigration law and policy, digital surveillance, global health governance, and democratic fragility.

English law has become a commodity for developing, resource-rich economies desirous of diversifying their economies. A small number of special economic zones, chiefly in the Gulf, but also elsewhere, have set up entire legal systems predicated to a large or smaller degree on English law. This transplantation is based on three distinct models, namely: (a) wholesale incorporation of statutes; (b) general reference to English law as residual law and; (c) implicitly, on the basis of the common law origin of judges appointed to the courts of special economic zones. The expectation in all these models is that the specialised courts and other stakeholders (eg, legal professionals) will apply English statutory and common law in conformity with other laws applicable in the special economic zones. Ultimately, the practice of the courts and other participants will give rise to a sui generis common law jurisdiction that is in dialogue with the courts and institutions of England and Wales. The article argues that this has already been achieved in the majority of the special economic zones examined here.

Online misinformation endangers the infrastructure of fact essential to public discourse and presents an even greater threat where it is being utilised as a weapon by hostile state actors. In recognition of these dangers, Singapore has implemented legal measures to combat online misinformation, enacting in quick succession the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA). These statutes open up novel frontiers of development for Singapore's free speech jurisprudence. Indeed, these statutes confer upon government authorities the power to compel the authors of certain material to display notices stating that the material contains falsehoods or originated from a hostile information campaign. Yet, should one accept that the constitutional right to freedom of speech extends to the freedom not to speak, the compulsion of such expressions may well be unconstitutional under Singapore's free speech guarantee. This article will study the theoretical justifications for a prohibition against compelled speech to evaluate whether Singapore free speech jurisprudence ought to recognise such a prohibition, propose a doctrinal framework to analyse compelled expressions by reference to US, UK, and Canadian jurisprudence, and critically assess how the POFMA and FICA would fare under such a doctrine.

Not long after the establishment of its Constitutional Tribunal in February 2011, Myanmar faced a constitutional crisis, when on 6 September 2012, all nine judges of the Tribunal resigned, after the Burmese parliament (Hluttaw) had initiated impeachment proceedings against the Tribunal members. The incident was seen by several commentators as a sign of the growing strength and independence of the Hluttaw, while others argued that the impeachment of the Tribunal could threaten future stability. In February 2013, nine new members of the Constitutional Tribunal were appointed. However, several questions surrounding the role of the Constitutional Tribunal in Myanmar’s reform process remain. In particular, it is not entirely clear how the independence and authority of the Tribunal should be further strengthened. This paper examines the role of Myanmar’s Constitutional Tribunal, against the background of the country’s history and current political situation. By drawing on the experiences of the Indonesian Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi), the paper addresses the question of how the post-impeachment Tribunal may be able to fortify its position vis-à-vis the various political actors in the country.

China and Australia are extremely significant trade partners and investors. Australia has a very well established competition law, now called the Competition and Consumer Law 2010, with a well-established merger regime. China has a relatively new competition law, the Anti-Monopoly Law 2007. This article compares merger control in the two jurisdictions. The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has already referred to an Australian decision in rejecting a merger, the only reference to a foreign decision to date, which confirms the utility of the comparison. This article critically evaluates the determinations of MOFCOM and compares the approach of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian regulator. It assesses the transparency and predictability of procedures and decision-making in the two jurisdictions.

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.

This article seeks to utilize the existing literature on referendums to discuss the current situation in Hong Kong in order to make some theoretical and practical contributions to the field of constitutional studies. Theoretically, it attempts to situate and analyse Hong Kong’s current situation within Professor Tierney’s influential framework on constitutional referendums in order to further develop the constitutional theory in this area. Practically, it analyses, through comparative study, whether (and if so, how) referendums might provide a mechanism through which Hong Kong’s constitutional debate could productively move forward. It concludes by reiterating aspects of the Hong Kong experience that have aligned with, and further contributed to the constitutional theory on referendums and representative democracy. Moreover, it recommends that the Hong Kong Government begin consultations towards the tabling of legislation for a non-binding advisory referendum to be developed in accordance with the lessons learned from the jurisdictions discussed throughout the article.

This article began as mere curiosity over what appeared to be a paradox – Singapore and Hong Kong share countless economic and geopolitical similarities and compete vigorously for foreign direct investment (FDI), yet only the former has become a pharmaceutical hub while the latter struggles to attract any FDI in the sector. To find the reason for the “drastic” difference in pharmaceutical FDI, we compare the economic, legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks of the two jurisdictions focusing on the factors that have been identified in the economic literature as having the most relevance for FDI decision-making. The analysis discounts economic and legal factors before finding variances in policy and regulatory frameworks as the critical difference accounting for the disparity in the pharmaceutical FDI. Given that Hong Kong occasionally considers transforming itself into the “pharmaceutical centre for the Asia-Pacific”, this article calls for a change in policy approach and strategy before this aspiration is considered more realistically.

Insolvency practitioner remuneration is a vexed topic globally and the role of courts in fixing and reviewing remuneration is controversial. This article compares the approaches adopted by the courts in the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore to the issue of fixing and reviewing corporate insolvency practitioners’ remuneration. The analysis considers the factors that the courts in the three jurisdictions consider in deciding remuneration claims including reasonableness, proportionality and the need for insolvency practitioners to justify their claims. Measures taken in each of the jurisdictions to facilitate predictability in time-based remuneration, whether through legislation, professional codes or judicial development, are examined. Various initiatives towards greater participation of external experts in deciding remuneration claims are also considered. The analysis finds that the three jurisdictions share some similarities despite jurisdictional differences but also differ in some important aspects. The article argues that courts have taken the initiative in each jurisdiction to fill a perceived regulatory gap where legislation provides little or ambiguous guidance, or where the judiciary believes that legislation and regulation have not kept up with community expectations. The results also highlight the cross-pollination of ideas in these jurisdictions.