BAR MALAYSIA

On the court record

The professional body of the Bar, appearing as amicus curiae or party in constitutional and administrative-law cases — forest-reserve degazetting, tax-collection challenges, and prosecutorial-discretion review — rather than in private commercial disputes.

The Malaysian Bar (Bar Malaysia) is the professional body of advocates and solicitors, and its presence in the corpus reflects that institutional role: it appears not to advance a private commercial interest but as a party or as amicus curiae in cases raising constitutional, administrative and rule-of-law questions of general importance, principally before the Federal Court and Court of Appeal.

As amicus curiae it has assisted the courts on questions reaching beyond the immediate litigants. These included a leave application for judicial review to challenge a gazette notification degazetting land as a forest reserve; an administrative-law appeal over judicial review of a decision of the Director General of Inland Revenue and whether the availability of a domestic remedy under the Income Tax Act 1967 precluded judicial review; and a constitutional challenge to the "pay first, dispute later" system of tax collection under section 106(3) of the Income Tax Act 1967, engaging Article 121 of the Federal Constitution. It also assisted on a constitutional reference filed under sections 84 and 85 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 concerning the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, and on questions under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976.

As a party, the Bar appeared as appellant in a judicial-review matter concerning the leave threshold and the exercise of prosecutorial discretion under Article 145(3) of the Federal Constitution and section 254 of the Criminal Procedure Code — the practice of a discharge not amounting to an acquittal, and when the courts will intervene in appropriate, rare and exceptional cases. Taken together, the Bar's appearances trace the institution's characteristic interventions at the intersection of constitutional law, administrative law and the administration of justice. What distinguishes the Bar's appearances from those of a commercial litigant is that its participation is directed at the development of the law itself — the availability of judicial review, the limits of prosecutorial and executive discretion, and the protection of environmental and constitutional interests — rather than at recovering money or property for itself.