Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

©The Sunday Star (Used by permission)

KUALA LUMPUR: Existing commercial buildings may be used as courtrooms to help reduce the backlog of court cases, Chief Justice Tan Sri Zaki Tun Azmi said.

The move, Zaki said, is in tandem with increasing the number of judges. And courtrooms need time to be constructed.

“We are looking at utilising existing commercial buildings which can be used with minor renovations. This has been done before,” he said during his closing speech at the 21st LawAsia Conference titled Challenging Asia yesterday

Zaki said his biggest challenge was to overcome the backlog problem and the solution was not merely increasing judges but to also improve efficiency and eliminate postponements.

Zaki said minimising or even eliminating postponements were also crucial as backlog of cases could be cleared expeditiously if hearings proceeded as scheduled.

For you: Ambiga presenting a souvenir to Tan Sri Zaki at the conference in Kuala Lumpur Saturday. With them is LawAsia immediate past president Mah Weng Kwai.

He said when he first joined the judiciary, he discovered that up to 50% of cases fixed for hearing at the Federal Court level were postponed at the request of the parties.

“This number has been drastically reduced not only at the Federal Court but at the Court of Appeal. When I was the president of the Court of Appeal, there were strict instructions that no postponement be granted at the last minute,” he added.

He said judges were encouraged to write simple judgments and “a good powerful submission by a lawyer will help the judge in writing a good judgment.”

He said that while writing judgment was one aspect of a good judiciary, the integrity of the judges and the lawyers appearing before them was also important.

“A judgment given on the influence of bias will not be a good judgment. It must be free of any influence. I strongly believe that Malaysian judges today are independent and impartial,” he said, adding that it was the duty of judges and lawyers to uphold the rule of law.

Zaki called for the full support of the Malaysian Bar to ensure that plans to improve the judiciary can be successful.

Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said the council would play its part in ensuring cases were heard expeditiously and that there was speedy access to justice.

On the impact of the financial crisis, Zaki said an increase in litigation could be expected, including those involving cross-border disputes.

“When asset values, investment values and share prices fall substantially, the blame game must follow and litigation will be one of the main options considered by victims.

“In the new global village, cross-border litigation will be on the rise and we must not merely accept this as a challenge but instead actively embrace this opportunity to promote Malaysia as a regional dispute-resolution hub,” he added.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed