Panglima Richard Malanjum

On the judicial record

A record of apex-level reasoning on the constitution's structural guarantees, from the Shariah Advisory Council scheme under the Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009 to stacked presumptions under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 and the limits on gag orders and pre-trial disclosure.

Panglima Richard Malanjum sits in the Federal Court, the apex court of Malaysia, and this collection gathers final appellate decisions on questions of the first importance. A landmark constitutional strand concerns Islamic banking and the binding force of the Shariah Advisory Council's rulings on the courts under sections 56 and 57 of the Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009, measured against Article 121 of the Federal Constitution and the separation of the judicial power. The collection includes the constitutional challenge to the stacked presumptions in drug prosecutions under section 37A of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, tested against Articles 5, 8 and 121 of the Federal Constitution. Criminal-procedure questions of high public significance also feature, including a stay of proceedings under section 64 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964, the jurisdiction to issue a gag order and its relationship to Article 126 of the Federal Constitution, and pre-trial production of documents under section 51A of the Criminal Procedure Code and the effect of non-obstante clauses in the anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering statutes. Winding-up, banking, land, tort and professional-disciplinary appeals round out the range. Because the Federal Court sits in panels and its rulings bind the courts below, these decisions settle the correct construction of a statute or the proper scope of a power rather than merely resolving the dispute at hand, and several define the boundary between the judicial power and other branches of government. Private individuals are referred to by role; corporate, governmental, banking and statutory parties are named. A recurring concern is the integrity of the judicial power and the constitutional limits on measures that restrict liberty or the fair conduct of a trial, whether the measure is a statutory presumption, a gag order, or a provision purporting to bind the court to an external ruling. The collection is a valuable record of apex-level reasoning on the constitution's structural guarantees and on the boundary between the courts and the other branches of government.