Since its inception in 1957, Malaysia’s Federal Court (FC) has often been embroiled in high-profile decisions that have dramatically shaped the rule of law and constitutional practice in Malaysia. Recent political change has renewed hope that the FC can reassert its early role as an independent and impartial arbiter of political conflict. This paper investigates determinants of the FC’s behaviour since 1960. It draws on a unique data set of 102 major political cases and socio-biographic profiles of the 73 judges who voted in these cases. After describing patterns of court decisions across time and judges, we test specifically for the impact on their decisions of the 1988 judicial crisis, length of time on the bench, the terms of successive prime ministers, and judges’ personal attributes, such as religion and ethnicity. Ethnicity, appointment after 1988, and the appointing prime minister proved to be closely associated with the direction of voting. We then position the results in the context of Malaysia’s evolving constitutional democracy and discuss their implications for students of comparative judicial politics.

中文翻译：

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政治与马来西亚联邦法院，1960-2018：实证调查

自 1957 年成立以来，马来西亚联邦法院 (FC) 经常卷入引人注目的裁决，这些裁决极大地塑造了马来西亚的法治和宪法实践。最近的政治变化重新燃起了希望，FC 能够重新确立其作为政治冲突独立和公正仲裁者的早期角色。本文调查了自 1960 年以来 FC 行为的决定因素。它利用了一个独特的数据集，该数据集包含 102 个主要政治案件和在这些案件中投票的 73 名法官的社会传记资料。在描述了跨时间和法官的法院判决模式之后，我们专门测试了 1988 年司法危机对他们的判决的影响、在替补席上的时间长短、历任总理的任期以及法官的个人属性，如宗教和种族。种族，1988 年以后的任命，事实证明，任命总理与投票方向密切相关。然后，我们将结果置于马来西亚不断发展的宪政民主的背景下，并讨论它们对比较司法政治学学生的影响。