Democracy and Governance

Lawyer and activist Daryl Yang discusses how a consumer protection approach to conversion therapy might offer a balanced alternative to legislative change that permits individual choice whilst protecting against misleading claims.

  Dedicated to honor the memory of our dear friend and co-author, Rodrigo Ventocilla. He will always be remembered for his intellectual motivation, passion for activism, kind friendship and invaluable contributions to the class of 2023.   The world has taken great strides toward gender equality in recent years, and this is apparent in many […]

Introduction  To what extent are state-led social interventions for women authoritarian? Western literature on the Middle East, and in particular on Saudi Arabia, suggests decision-making is centralized and a result of enlightened despots such Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). But this approach misses upward dialogue initiated by citizenry to communicate desired rights for women to leaderships. […]

As Zimbabwe heads to the polls in April 2023, spokesperson for the opposition Citizen Coalition for Change, Fadzayi Mahere, has stated that it is time for the youth to take over the mantle of leadership in the country. Mahere was speaking during an interview with Africa Policy Journal in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are more than […]

While the government has announced that it will repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code, it has also sought to protect the definition of marriage from constitutional challenge. Lawyer and activist Daryl Yang explains what the resulting constitutional amendment may look like, as well as what it means to the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore.

I could feel the bass of the music thumping in my thoracic cavity. The soles of my shoes were sticky with the beer that had spilled on the floor when I saw Eva inhaling a line of white powder off the kitchen countertop.

Note: This article is featured in the Kennedy School Review’s 2022 print journal. The War on Drugs and Violence in Latin America: Time to Hit Reset Latin America is the most violent region in the world, with only 8 percent of the global population accounting for 38 percent of the global share of murder. That […]

On 30th November 2021, Barbados became a republic. Nearly 400 years after the first British ship arrived on the island, and exactly 55 years after independence from British colonial rule, Prime Minister Mia Mottley conducted a ceremony replacing Queen Elizabeth II with Dame Sandra Mason as the head of state. Bells chimed across the capital, […]

At present, Singapore is the only country to have taken steps to dissolve a local chapter of South Korea’s Shincheonji Church. Jonathan Chan uses this decision as a lens to probe the state’s approaches to religious management. He argues that Shincheonji failed to align with Singapore’s model of multi-religious toleration, in particular through its lack of transparency about its intentions and motivations. This was seen as potentially causing fissures within families and Christian denominations, prompting the government’s intervention in dissolving the chapter.

Ng Qi Siang argues that it was ultimately beneficial for Singapore to be omitted from the US-organized Summit for Democracy in December last year. By highlighting key characteristics of the summit, he shows how Singapore’s participation is likely to signal a weakened commitment to its foreign policy principles, which includes the city-state’s commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of other states and the pursuit of good relations with all who wish to work with it. He then discusses great-power tensions between the US and China, and how Singapore’s non-participation in the summit aligns with its strategy to navigate a more polarised world order.

In the judicial construction of contracts, ambiguities are construed against the drafter based on the canon of “Ambiguitas contra stipulatorem est.” On July 25th, 2021, the Tunisian president Kais Saied imported this technique to constitutional law by dismissing the Prime Minister (PM) and suspending the parliament chaired by “Rachid AL Ghannouchi,” the head of Ennahda […]

This article compares the wartime Supreme Court’s complete deferral to the government’s justification for the detention of Japanese Americans to argue that the modern Supreme Court repeated a similar tragic mistake almost seventy-five years later in Trump v. Hawaii. Introduction Without question, the Japanese American internment experience is relevant to the post-9/11 war on terror […]