GENERAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK

THE GENERAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Singapore has no legislation that deals directly with surrogacy by that name. But the lacuna is not an oversight. The Singapore Parliament is well aware of the issues, given that the formal regulation of surrogacy has been urged upon the government of the day in recent Parliamentary debates. This does not, however, mean that surrogacy is beyond the reach of regulation or formal law in Singapore. As will be explained later in this chapter, Singapore does however have a number of legislative enactments that, together with executive instruments having the force of subsidiary legislation, impose clear and enforceable legal restrictions on the conduct of surrogacy arrangements within Singapore. Further, some of these legal provisions have extra-territorial reach, and have the potential to affect surrogacy arrangements involving a party or parties having a sufficient connection to Singapore as defined by the law.

It may be useful at this point to set out briefly the key features of the constitutional and legal framework in Singapore in order to understand the development of the regulatory regime for surrogacy in Singapore, and in particular, the impact of English common precedents on local judicial decisions. From 1819 to 1963, Singapore was a British colonial possession before its merger with the new state of Malaysia in 1963. In 1965, Singapore became an independent country after peaceful secession from Malaysia by mutual agreement. Like many former British colonies, it inherited a constitutional system of the Westminster model, but with an elected President replacing the monarch, and a unicameral Parliament instead of a bicameral one. More than half a century after ceasing to be a British Crown Colony, the English common law continues to play the dominant role in its constitutional and legal system.

The habit of adherence to the English common law has deep historical roots some two centuries old in the form of the Second Charter of Justice 1826 by which the Crown decreed that English law should be applied to its new possessions in the Straits of Malacca, including Singapore. Formal legal links between the United Kingdom and Singapore continued after independence with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council being constituted as the highest court of appeal within the legal system.

This book is the culmination of a research project spanning more than three years and events on two continents. It has involved 29 contributors from 19 jurisdictions, coming from the fields of law, medicine and philosophy. A project of this magnitude could not have been undertaken without the generous support of the WYNG Foundation of Hong Kong. It was through their funding that we were able to bring together experts from Europe, Asia, Africa, America and the Middle East at a conference held under the auspices of the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law (CMEL) of the University of Hong Kong and Cambridge Family Law on 9 and 10 September 2016, which served as a foundation for this volume. We wish to thank the Foundation for giving us this opportunity and hope that this book furthers their mission to acquire, exchange, disseminate and apply knowledge to achieve a more advanced and a more caring society. We also wish to particularly thank Au Yun Ling, for her exceptional administrative support in organising the Hong Kong conference, and St John's College and its Master, Rev. Dr Eric Chong, for providing accommodation for some of our speakers (and authors of this volume).

The Hong Kong conference was followed by a conference on ‘Law and Practice of Surrogacy’, held at Cambridge on 25 and 26 June 2018 and organised jointly by Cambridge Family Law and the Academy of European Law (ERA), with a focus on European developments. We would particularly like to thank Dr Angelika Fuchs, the Head of Section for Private Law at ERA, as well as Tabea Lüth from ERA for the very fruitful and efficient cooperation on this event.

The (probably) final event to which this project is tied, and where the book will be officially launched, will be the ‘International Surrogacy Forum’ in Cambridge on 27 and 28 June 2019, organised jointly by Cambridge Family Law, the International Academy of Family Lawyers and the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Family Law. We would like to thank, in particular, Anne-Marie Hutchinson OBE, QC (Hon) for taking the initiative on this event and being so supportive throughout the process.