Attorney General's Chambers

On the court record

Marks the reported decisions in which the Federation's chief advocate argues the constitutional limits of criminal procedure, fundamental liberties and executive power at the appellate level.

The Attorney General's Chambers appears in the reported judgments as the Federation's constitutional and appellate advocate, and its docket in the corpus is weighted more heavily toward the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) than toward first-instance trials. A distinctive cluster of its matters concerns the appellate machinery of criminal justice itself: whether the Court of Appeal may strike out a criminal appeal filed by the Pendakwa Raya (the Public Prosecutor) when the notice of appeal cannot be served on the respondent, and whether, having struck the appeal out, the court retains power to reinstate it. It has argued the review jurisdiction of the apex court under Rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court 1995 and the inherent power to reopen concluded sentences. The Chambers appears in constitutional litigation of real weight — challenges to judicial whipping as disproportionate and contrary to Article 8(1) of the Federal Constitution and to the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment reflected in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration; disputes over remand under section 96(3) of the Armed Forces Act 1972 and the Court-Martial Rules; and citizenship claims turning on whether a person was born a citizen and whether that person was otherwise stateless. On the executive-defence side it resists judicial review of ministerial and enforcement decisions — including a second detention order against a vessel under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952 and the omission to name the Public Prosecutor over the release of share certificates — and it defends the Government in medical-negligence quantum appeals where liability was admitted, such as an assessment following an above-knee amputation. Acting for the Attorney General and the Government, its presence marks the corpus's most consequential contests over criminal procedure, fundamental liberties and the reach of executive power.