Administrative Law

I remember that during Constitutional Law class last year, we were told that our Consti is the framework for our nation. It is like the skeleton on which the Law is cloaked. Yesterday, I learned that Administrative Law, is the meat the binds the skeleton together.

Succinctly, in my own words, Administrative Law is about the exercise of Power granted by the Consti and matters related to it including remedies. However, it cannot exist on its own and has to always fall back onto the Consti.

That is why, all study of Administrative Law must begin with the analysis of the Consti. I have to thank our lecturer, Dr Gan, for introducing us to interesting constitutions from other countries such as India, Hong Kong, and South Africa.

India, so that we can see where our founding fathers screwed up when drafting the Consti. Where a simple switch of injunctive and conjunctive weakened the provision of A.14 of the Indian constitution into A.8 of our Consti on equality.

Hong Kong, so that we can see the genius of A.39 of their Basic Law, which imported various international laws on human rights into the SAR such that the people are protected against the powerful Communist regime.

South Africa, so that we can see how a Dream constitution is constructed with so many provisions to protect the people against all forms of oppression from organs of power in order to prevent Apartheid from ever happening again.

Compared to these countries, our Consti is very weak indeed, and made weaker by the many amendments over the years. The study of this subject is going to open my eyes up to bad policies and worse judgements. One word – Public Interest Litigation.

This subject is going to be interesting indeed.

LEEP Round-up

By now, I have attended the first lecture for each of the modules that I am taking this year – Criminal, Land, Company, Family and Administrative Law. So, this is my general round-up of each of the classes.

The only class that I am unlikely to enjoy is Land Law, mainly due to the lecturer – she’s kinda boring. Plus, the subject seems to be quite technical in nature. The main statute itself – National Land Code – is a 1-inch thick volume. I don’t even want to imagine the number of cases that I will have to go thru.

The class that I don’t think I’ll be able to learn much from is Family Law. The lecturer is fairly open minded and constantly cracks dirty jokes in class (a certain Dr Irene Tan would be appalled). As a result, the class is quite lively but it leaves little time for any deep analysis of the Law. However, from my preliminary study of the subject, Family Law is not very deep.

It’s certainly not as wide as Administrative Law, which is the other class that I don’t think I’ll be able to learn much from. The lecturer is very passionate and has an axe to grind with our present government for almost six-decades of bad law. However, the subject is extremely interesting as public interest litigation features prominently in it.

Both Criminal Law and Company Law classes are fairly well structured (the latter more so). They’re being delivered like a typical academic law lecture – outline, objectives, legislation, cases. As a result, I think that the classes are going to be the easiest ones to stomach this year. The law itself also seems to be fairly straight-forward so far.

So there. I hope that I will be able to equal or better my performance last year. This would require substantively more work on my part. None of these subjects are going to be a walk in the park!

Sdn Bhd v Bhd

Yesterday, I had my first class on Company Law. In that class, we essentially discussed definitions – various types of companies, relationships, and the veil of incorporation. I had a superb time in class and my brains were bursting by the end of the day.

A word on the lecturer – Prof Choong. I really like him a lot. He is a superb Company Law lecturer. He reminds me of a typical ‘mad professor’ kind of person. He was also very structured in his lecture and really knew his stuff.

Anyway, there were a lot of legal classifications and definitions yesterday, which are all available from the Act itself. The Act itself defines several types of companies: limited or unlimited [S.14(2)]; limited by shares [S.14(2)(a), S.214(1)(d)] or guarantee [S.14(2)(b), S.214(1)(e)]; private or public [S.15, S.4]; and some corner cases e.g. private exempt companies [S.4].

Since I have a 13-yr old company myself, I could easily relate to a lot of the concepts and learned a lot of new things in the process as well. After passing this module, I assume that I will not need to depend solely on my Company Secretary for advice any more.

The definitions continued with how companies are related to each other whether as a holding or subsidiary [S.6, S.5(1)]. I learned here that it’s not just a majority share-holding that matters [S.5(1)(a)(iii)] but they can also be related by votes [S.5(1)(a)(ii)] and/or board members [S.5(1)(a)(i)].

The last bit that we covered was on the concept of a separate legal entity – the crux of Company Law. This concept was not enshrined in the statute but is found in Common Law. The general rule is that the corporate entity is considered a separate person in the eyes of the Law. However, as usual, there are a ton of exceptions to this rule.

I’m still waiting for Reasonable Man to show its face.