CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that rule by law, the use of the legal form as a cloak for arbitrary power, creates a serious problem of domination that can undermine the law-like character of legal order as a framework of norms that should facilitate the interests of legal subjects. This argument builds from an analysis of the October 2007 decision by Malaysia’s highest court, the Federal Court, in Public Prosecutor v. Kok Wah Kuan, where the majority rejected the separation of powers as an ‘integral’ feature of the constitutional order while the sole dissenting judge defended the principle as fundamental to democracy and the rule of law. The paper uses the minority judgment to develop an understanding of the rule of law as a ‘culture of justification’ where the legal subject’s right to participate in making political decisions that affect his or her interests is primary to the determination of whether an exercise of state power is legitimate.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER


Dr. Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam is Assistant Professor of Law at Carleton University. His teaching and research interests are in legal and political philosophy. He has published on the negative effects of detention without trial upon the health of the rule of law in the Malaysian context, as well as its likely ill-effects for the health of the rule of law within constitutional liberal democracies.

REGISTRATION

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