Ketua Setiausaha Kementerian Dalam Negeri

On the court record

Illustrates how the courts determine claims to citizenship by operation of law and give effect to the constitutional safeguards protecting against statelessness.

The Ketua Setiausaha Kementerian Dalam Negeri (the Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs) appears in this corpus exclusively as a respondent, in citizenship and personal-status litigation where the applicant seeks a declaration of Malaysian citizenship. The decisions turn on the citizenship provisions of the Federal Constitution, and in particular citizenship by operation of law under Article 14(1)(b) read with the Second Schedule, including the sub-paragraphs that confer citizenship on a person born within the Federation who is not born a citizen of any other country. Recurring questions include whether a child was born within the Federation, whether the child would otherwise be stateless, and how the jus soli and jus sanguinis principles operate under the constitutional scheme. The applicant typically proceeds by originating summons (saman pemula — originating summons) seeking a declaration of citizenship and consequential orders for the issue of the appropriate identity and citizenship documents, and the Secretary General is named as the officer of the Ministry responsible for such matters. Because these cases concern the acquisition of citizenship at birth and the documentation that follows from it, they engage the safeguards against statelessness and the balance between the State's control of citizenship and the constitutional entitlement of a person who satisfies the statutory conditions. The matters are decided in the High Court with appeals to the Court of Appeal, where several decisions on the operation of Article 14(1)(b) have been given. Collectively the decisions in which the Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs is a party illustrate how the courts determine claims to citizenship by operation of law and give effect to the constitutional safeguards protecting against statelessness. Several of the reported matters also reach the Court of Appeal, where the operation of Article 14(1)(b) and the Second Schedule has been examined in successive decisions, so that the corpus reflects a developing appellate treatment of citizenship by operation of law. Across these matters the office appears as the responsible arm of the Ministry against which a declaration of citizenship is sought.