This article examines the issues experienced by civil lawyers when studying the common law. It considers the extent of the differences between common law and civil law legal systems, examines the challenges which students from civil law jurisdictions face when first exposed to the common law, analyses the various ways in which these challenges may be met, and summarises civilians’ overall impressions of the common law.

In July 2010 the Timor-Leste Government promulgated the Law Against Domestic Violence. This is part of a constitutional promise to improve women and child security. Inherent in this development is the shift from traditional dispute resolution system to a state criminal justice system. This shift identifies domestic violence as a public crime and relies on greater participation from the stakeholders of domestic violence, i.e., the police, prosecution, legal services, health care services, social care services and community leaders. This paper examines the legal framework of the new domestic violence law and the impact on the stakeholders in delivering the legal obligation to promote women and child security in Timor-Leste. Inherent in this discussion is the question of whether the new law can reform the traditional justice system, change community behaviour and meet the competing challenges of cultural relativism in each district of Timor-Leste.

In 2008, Indonesia introduced its first “freedom of information” statute – Law 14 of 2008 on Disclosure of Public Information (the “FOI Law” or the “Law”) – which became fully operational in 2010. The FOI Law is an important component of the government transparency and accountability mechanisms established after Soeharto and his authoritarian “New Order” government fell in 1998. This article assesses the extent to which the FOI Law has been effective in requiring public bodies to disclose “public” information that they would rather keep within their ranks. More time is needed for these reforms to take hold. However, this article, which provides the first academic analysis of the freedom of information reforms “in practice”, shows that Indonesia’s central Information Commission and the courts have, with two important exceptions, applied the FOI Law in favour of information-seekers, thereby providing some reason for optimism for the future of this reform.

Proselytisation restrictions are typically subjected to two objections. First, these restrictions curtail religious liberty and impede religious truth-seeking. Second, these restrictions tend to favour politically dominant religions and discriminate against minority religions. The restrictions on offensive religious propagation in Singapore thus present an interesting departure in which sanctioned religions are not politically marginalised religions, whereas protected religions include numerical minority religions that are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged. This article utilises the atypical case study of Singapore to highlight the limitations of the two typical objections toward proselytisation restrictions. In particular, the emphasis on religious truth-seeking underpinning these objections is premised upon a distinct set of religious worldviews not shared by the majority of religions in Singapore. This article posits that if religious truth-seeking is no longer the accepted normative goal, then there may be circumstances in which some limited and even-handed restrictions on offensive religious propagation are sufficiently justified on the grounds of social peace and harmony.