ABSTRACT This article seeks to explore the British government’s perception of the role of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as a method of strengthening cohesion amongst the Commonwealth community, and in particular delves into the constitutional and diplomatic challenges that the British government faced in its attempt to utilise the Judicial Committee in order to maintain close ties with its former Southeast Asian colonies in the 1960s. Suggestions were made by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Privy Council Office from the mid-1960s that newly-independent republics such as Singapore and Malaysia should be allowed to send its citizens to London as members of the Judicial Committee in order to dilute the prejudice against the Committee as a remnant of colonial rule. However, the proposals were rejected by the Lord Chancellor’s Office on the grounds that Asian judges were of insufficient calibre to sit as members of the Judicial Committee, and that citizens of republics were unable to swear an oath of loyalty to the British monarch as was required for all Privy Counsellors. The Privy Council Office were of the opinion that a new system could be introduced whereby the Judicial Committee member would not have to be a fully-fledged Privy Counsellor and therefore would not have to swear the oath, while the Commonwealth Secretariat put forward its argument that Asian judges were good enough to ensure standards of the Judicial Committee would not be lowered. However, the Lord Chancellor’s Office argued that such non-Privy Counsellors would only be ‘second-class’ constituents of the Judicial Committee whose rulings would be unacceptable to countries such as Australia and instead proposed the creation of a Commonwealth Court of Appeal which the Foreign Office deemed unrealistic. In the end, no judges from the Asian republics were allowed sit on the Judicial Committee, resulting in Malaysia and Singapore abolishing their appeals to the Judicial Committee in 1984 and 1994 respectively.

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发誓还是不发誓？：英国、东南亚和枢密院司法委员会改革的尝试，1964-1971

摘要 本文旨在探讨英国政府对枢密院司法委员会作为加强英联邦社区凝聚力的一种方法的作用的看法，特别是深入探讨英国政府在其尝试中面临的宪法和外交挑战。在 1960 年代利用司法委员会与前东南亚殖民地保持密切联系。外交和联邦事务部和枢密院办公室从 1960 年代中期提出建议，应允许新加坡和马来西亚等新独立的共和国将其公民派往伦敦担任司法委员会成员，以淡化偏见反对委员会作为殖民统治的残余。然而，大法官办公室拒绝了这些提议，理由是亚洲法官的素质不足以担任司法委员会的成员，而且共和国公民无法像所有人一样宣誓效忠英国君主。枢密顾问。枢密院办公室认为可以引入新制度，使司法委员会成员不必是成熟的枢密院顾问，因此不必宣誓，而英联邦秘书处则提出其论点亚裔法官足以确保司法委员会的标准不会降低。然而，大法官办公室辩称，此类非枢密院顾问只会是司法委员会的“二等”成员，其裁决不会为澳大利亚等国家所接受，而是提议设立一个英联邦上诉法院，外交部认为不切实际。最终，亚洲共和国的法官没有被允许进入司法委员会，导致马来西亚和新加坡分别于 1984 年和 1994 年取消了向司法委员会提出的上诉。