Writing the Constitution: Forty years of Singapore constitutional scholarship

In Singapore, few law students and fewer legal academics will rank Constitutional Law as their favourite subject. Like oxygen, the Constitution is necessary, but once it is there, we tend to take it for granted and forget about it. In Singapore, Constitutional Law is a subject apart from daily living, indulged in only by academics and scholars. Aside from the odd criminal law or preventive detention case, constitutional arguments are hardly ever vented in our courts. Thankfully, the scholarship on Singapore’s Constitution in the past 40 years has been extensive and rigorous and remains in a robust state of health. In this chapter, I will provide a broad bibliographical survey of this literature through the years and conclude with some suggestions for further research and writing.