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Politics and the Federal Court of Malaysia, 1960–2018: An Empirical Investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2020

Björn Dressel  and
Tomoo Inoue
Björn Dressel
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
Tomoo Inoue
Affiliation:
Seikei University, Seikei
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

MalaysiajudgesFederal Courtmegapoliticaljudicial behaviour
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 26 - 58
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Asian Journal of Law and Society

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Footnotes

•

The authors would like to express their thanks to two extremely thoughtful anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly helped to improve this article. Special thanks go to Cyrus Das, Malik Imtiaz, Chandra Kanagasabai, and Mathias Sinning for sharing their views and continuous support throughout this project. This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE130101706), as well as by the “Supporting the Rules-Based Order in Southeast Asia project” of the Australian National University, funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The opinions expressed here are the authors’ own and are not meant to represent those of (the Australian National University or) Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

*

Associate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. Correspondence to Björn Dressel, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, J.G. Crawford Building, No. 132 Lennox Crossing, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. E-mail address: bjoern.dressel@anu.edu.au.

**

Professor, Faculty of Economics, Seikei University.

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