Kerajaan Negeri Selangor

On the court record

Shows how the courts police the limits of State legislative and executive authority and the jurisdictional line between the civil and Shariah systems.

The Kerajaan Negeri Selangor (the Selangor State Government) appears in this corpus predominantly as a respondent in public-law litigation, in matters that sit at the intersection of administrative law, the Federal Constitution and the division between civil and Shariah jurisdiction. A significant group concerns judicial review — the challenge to gazette notifications, to the validity of a fatwa, and to State enactments and administrative decisions — where the courts consider whether the impugned instrument or decision was within power and whether it is amenable to review. The corpus reflects a series of Federal Court decisions on the boundary between the civil courts and the Syariah courts, including whether a person was ever a Muslim or is no longer a Muslim and where jurisdiction over that question lies, and the assessment of religious status against the constitutional guarantees. These cases engage the leading authorities on constitutional and statutory judicial review and on the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, and they test the standing of applicants — including advocacy organisations such as SIS Forum (Malaysia) — to bring such challenges. Land questions also arise where the State Government is joined alongside a district land administrator. Because the State Government exercises legislative and executive functions within its constitutional sphere, many of the decisions are as much about the limits of State power and the correct forum as about the substantive right in issue. The matters are decided in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and, notably, the Federal Court, where several questions of constitutional principle have been resolved. Collectively they show how the courts police the boundaries of State legislative and executive authority and the jurisdictional line between the civil and Shariah systems. A number of the decisions turn on the leave stage of judicial review, where the court decides whether an arguable case has been shown against the State and whether the decision or instrument is amenable to review at all, so that the threshold for challenging State action is itself frequently in issue before any question of merits is reached.