Butterworths' Annotated Statutes of Singapore: Criminal Law

Abstract

WHAT are statute annotations about? There are, of course, the venerable Halsbury's Statutes of England, and the great Indian works - Sarkar on Evidence and Ratanlal on Crimes, both of which are well into double digit editions. That they served a valuable function is not in doubt. In the days of pre-electronic legal research, the seemingly mundane task of collecting all the cases interpreting a particular provision was no small matter, even for a relatively small jurisdiction like Singapore. One had either to wade through every issue of the law reports and journals or to be at the mercy of indexers. It is in this tradition that this competent volume of Butterworths' Annotated Statutes series is written. All the significant cases are there.

If one had a short time in which look up the cases which have interpreted a particular penal statute (the volume includes the major legislation - eg, the Penal Code, the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Prevention of Corruption Act), this is the work to turn to.