Rao & Kamal

On the court record

Rao & Kamal is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) combine administrative-law judicial review with serious criminal-appeal work. In the public-law field the firm has appeared in a judicial review to quash a university's decision to terminate an appointment as dean of a medical faculty, where the appointing authority had a discretion to terminate at any time and the court found insufficient grounds to give rise to a legitimate expectation, and in an application for a stay of a local authority's decision to grant a development order for a proposed development on land classified as reserve land for power lines and electricity transmission.

On the criminal side the firm has argued murder appeals under section 302 of the Penal Code (Kanun Keseksaan). In one, following a plea of guilty before the High Court and in the light of the Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023 (Act 846), the Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction but reduced the sentence; in another, the appellants, convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging, appealed against the whole of the conviction, and the appellate court, finding merit, set aside the death sentence and substituted a term of thirty-five years' imprisonment from the date of arrest together with whipping.

In the stay application the firm weighed the interests of the developer and the local authority against the risk to land reserved for electricity transmission, an example of the balancing the court undertakes before restraining an administrative decision. The reported profile is that of a litigation practice that pairs administrative-law challenges to the decisions of universities and local authorities, where legitimate expectation and the scope of a discretionary power recur, with criminal-appeal work on the gravest charges, where the reform of the mandatory death penalty has opened the way to alternative sentences. The firm's caseload reflects work both holding public bodies to account and defending the liberty and lives of those convicted of the most serious offences.