Kuala Lumpur: More time-saving measures will be adopted by Malaysian courts from today (Friday) to improve the justice system, Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat said Thursday.
In her message in conjunction with the New Year, she said the courts will be strictly enforcing measures to further increase efficiency and productivity starting from January 2021.
This includes directives previously issued by the judiciary via Practice Directions in 2017 and 2018 which require lawyers to file their written arguments 14 days before a case is heard in the court, with Tengku Maimun noting the reality that a majority of both private lawyers and government lawyers do not comply with this requirement.
“Most file their submissions a day before or even on the morning of the hearing,” she said in her New Year message.
She pointed out the importance of giving judges sufficient time to read the written arguments to complement the verbal arguments during proceedings.
Tengku Maimun said the lawyers’ compliance with the Practice Directions and timeline will boost judicial efficiency and contribute towards judges delivering quality judgements.
“As such, we now seek to strictly abide by the timeline. All submissions filed outside the 14-day period without leave of court will be automatically rejected,” she said, but noted that lawyers who had their written arguments rejected for failing to comply with the 14-day period will still have the opportunity to present their arguments verbally in court.
In Malaysia, those who wish to appeal to the Federal Court do not automatically get to do so, as they have to first seek the leave of the Federal Court in order to appeal and with leave granted based on the conditions under Section 96(a) of the Courts of Judicature Act — such as matters being decided for the first time or matters where the apex court’s decision would benefit the public.
For court hearings carried out physically for applications for leave to appeal to the Federal Court, Tengku Maimun said judges will from January 2021 limit the presentation of verbal arguments to just 20 minutes per party via their lawyers, but with this time limit to exclude the time taken by judges to ask questions to the lawyers.
Pointing out that the hearing of applications for leave to appeal are not meant to operate as an actual appeal, the Chief Justice said lawyers had on most occasions presented their arguments as if they were arguing on the actual appeal, and that it was “not uncommon” for lawyers to take more than half a day to argue on the leave application despite the law or principles relating to Section 96(a) being well settled.
“As I have said on many previous occasions, judicial time is far too precious for us. That said, this strict timing rule is subject to exceptions. There may be cases where the Court is minded to extend time if the circumstances so require,” she said.
“What we propose is not novel or extreme, and this approach is not unique to us,” she added.
Tengku Maimun noted that the Supreme Court in the US — the highest court there just like Malaysia’s Federal Court — strictly applies the rule of lawyers’ filing in of written arguments and a 30-minute time limit for verbal arguments in court for all appeals regardless of the cases’ complexity and including the time taken for judges there to ask questions to lawyers.
She also noted that the US judiciary’s website states that the US Supreme Court only accepts between 100 to 150 cases out of the 7,000 cases filed nationwide for review each year, contrasting the US experience with the 20-minute time limit to be imposed in Malaysia’s Federal Court next year onwards.
“What we propose to implement is thus a much more measured approach so that leave motions will no longer be confused for or treated like appeals. Further, this time requirement will only be imposed, for the time being, on physical hearings and not on online hearings,” she said.
A check of the Malaysian judiciary’s website shows that both rules — the 20-minute cap on verbal arguments for leave to appeal to the Federal Court and the 14-day deadline for filing of written arguments before court hearings in the Federal Court and the Court of Appeal — will be enforced from January 4, 2021 onwards.
Even before next year’s measures to save court time, Tengku Maimun said Federal Court panels have already been reduced to three judges per sitting or a three-member panel for all civil and criminal cases, with only public interest and constitutional cases having seven or nine judges per panel.
