This presentation explores how the Malaysian judges frame its communication with the public inhigh-profile political cases.
Malaysia was governed by a dominant political party, Barisan Nasional (BN) for over six decades since its independence. However, the party lost for the first time in the 2018 election. Since then, several politicians including the former Prime Minister have been brought to court on corruption, money laundering and misuse of power charges. Judicial legitimacy has long been a source of contention for the Malaysian judiciary; this was particularly heightened during the 1988 judicial crisis, which saw the then-prime minister remove the then Chief Justice from the bench. In the wake of Malaysia’s transformative political transition in 2018, this study examines the critical task of rebuilding judicial legitimacy within Malaysia’s evolving political landscape. The thesis aims to answer the question of how the Malaysian judges frame its communication with the public in high-profile political cases, and what reception it receives among the media, civil society and the legal profession at large. The thesis introduces two central arguments. First, the thesis proposes a process-based view of judicial legitimacy by arguing that legitimacy does not reside in courts alone but emerges through dynamic interactions among multiple institutional actors including judges, media, and the legal complex. Second, it introduces the concept of fragmented legitimacy to characterise the Malaysian condition, where different social segments operate with fundamentally different frameworks for evaluating judiciary along linguistic, ethnic, religious, class-based, and educational lines. This is distinguished from the polarisation literature in American judicial politics, which assumes an ideological axis of division.
The research draws on judicial decisions of the cases, newspaper articles covering the trials across three strategically selected media outlets, judicial speeches delivered by senior members of the Malaysian judiciary between 2018 and 2024, and semi-structured in-depth interviews with members of the legal complex in Malaysia. The thesis challenges the dominant paradigm in judicial legitimacy scholarship, which treats judicial legitimacy through a court-centric lens. It reconceptualises legitimacy as processual and multi-institutional that emerge through dynamic processes of communication, translation, and interpretation across multiple actors.
Event Speakers
Amalina Yasmin
Amalina Yasmin is a PhD candidate studying judicial politics and a recipient of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Before commencing her PhD, Amalina spent almost 8 years practising law in Malaysia. Her research interests are judicial politics, comparative constitutionalism, institution-building, and the rule of law in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia.