Plenary Session 3: Hot Button Public Law Issues in Singapore
Moderator
Dr Jaclyn Neo – Associate Professor (Faculty of Law), National University of Singapore; Consultant, WongPartnership LLP
Panellists
Aurill Kam – Director, Legal Clinic LLC
Dr Jack Lee – Deputy Research Director, Singapore Academy of Law
Benjamin Joshua Ong – Assistant Professor of Law, Singapore Management University
The Singapore Courts endorse the “green- light” approach to judicial review, one where the court plays a supporting role in good public governance by articulating clear rules and principles by which the Executive should abide. On this conception, the court is not in an adversarial relationship with the Executive. It however serves as a last line of defence when the rules and principles of good governance have been breached. The resultant judicial attitude of our Courts has sometimes been described as one of judicial deference and at other times, as no more than reflecting our cultural substratum of communitarian over individualist values. This session examines local jurisprudence and the attitude of our Courts towards the public law ideologies of proportionality (merits) review, the doctrine of substantive legitimate expectation and the basic structure doctrine, all of which involve a higher degree of judicial scrutiny on grounds of merits (as opposed to legality).