![handle is hein.journals/jmcl51 and id is 1 raw text is:
51 (1) JMCL THEIR LAW IN OUR HANDS-APPLICATION OF ENGLISH LAW ACT 1993
THEIR LAW IN OUR HANDS - THE APPLICATION OF
ENGLISH LAW ACT 1993 (SINGAPORE): ARE THERE
LESSONS FOR THE CIVIL LAW ACT OF 1956
(MALAYSIA)? *
CHAN SEK KEONG**
I INTRODUCTION
It is a great honour and privilege to be asked to deliver the 13th Tun Suffian Lecture.
The late Tun Suffian was as a person of unshakeable principles (as described by
Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin), and as having guided the Malaysian judiciary along a path
of rigorous judicial integrity and independence (as lauded by Prof HP Lee),' and as
Malaysia's most distinguished judge; his international standing made him one of the
few in his country to speakfreely without repression.2
I did not know Tun Suffian personally. However, I attended his Braddell
Memorial Lecture in 1982 where he proposed his veil of anonymity as a test of the
integrity and neutrality of a judgment on constitutional rights. He said:
In a multi-racial and multi-religious society like yours and mine, while we judges
cannot help being Malay or Chinese or Indian; or being Muslim or Buddhist or
Hindu or whatever, we strive not to be too identified with any particular race or
religion - so that nobody reading our judgement with our name deleted could with
confidence identify our race or religion, and so that the various communities,
especially minority communities, are assured that we will not allow their rights to be
trampled underfoot.3
Received: December 16, 2024, Revised: June 5, 2025, Accepted: June 11, 2025.
Published online: June 12, 2025
DOI:
* The 13th Tun Suffian Memorial Lecture 2024 delivered at the Faculty of Law, Universiti
Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia on 10 October 2024.
** Former Chief Justice of Singapore. The author can be contacted at
<chansekkeong21@gmail.com>.
1 HP Lee 'The Judicial Power and Constitutional Government - Convergence and
Divergence in the Australian and the Malaysian Experience' Commonwealth Legal
Information Institute <http://www.www.connioniiorg>.
2 Obituary in the Telegraph (UK), 28 September 2000.
3 Cited by Zulkefli PCA in Indira Gandhi a/p Mutho v Pengarah Jabatan Agama Islam
Perak & Ors and other appeals [2018] 1 MLJ 545, 556 [5].
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jmcl51&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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