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STATE COURTS WORKPLAN 2015: “Delivering Justice to the Community”

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STATE COURTS WORKPLAN 2015: “Delivering Justice to the Community” STATE COURTS WORKPLAN 2015: “Delivering Justice to the Community” Friday, 24 April 2015 Keynote Address by The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee, the Presiding Judge of the State Courts, the Hon Judicial Commissioner, Mr See Kee Oon, fellow Judges, ladies and gentlemen. INTRODUCTION 1. It gives me great pleasure to address you at today’s State Courts Workplan. Our theme this year, “Delivering Justice to the Community”, is especially apt as the Courts’ core mission is to serve the people of Singapore1 through an effective and accessible justice system. 2. This Workplan was originally meant to be held on 27 March 2015. That was in the midst of the National Period of Mourning after the demise of our founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and the PJSC and I decided to reschedule it to this morning. Given that context, I thought it would be appropriate to begin my address this morning by situating the work we do as Judges and Court Administrators within Mr Lee’s vision of the role of the courts and of the Judiciary in our country. In the aftermath of Mr Lee’s demise, we as a people, have had the occasion to reflect deeply on the unlikely journey we have made from our roots as a modest third world city to what we have become today. We have also had a number of discussions about how we might fittingly honour the memory of our founding fathers. But the point has been forcefully made by others that we would honour them most eloquently by remaining faithful and committed to the ideals that inspired them. This is the context in which I wish to examine Mr Lee’s perspective on the role of the courts in Singapore. 3. Mr Lee saw a free, independent, incorrupt and efficient Judiciary as vital to the success of Singapore. He practised law for about a decade, including in these courts, before becoming our founding Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, he was unwavering in his conviction that the Public Service, including the Judiciary, must retain its fair share of talent. For Mr Lee, the Rule of Law was not a mere abstraction. To him, it was important that our legal system operated well at a practical level to ensure order and justice in dealings among the people in Singapore, and that justice is fair and accessible to all. Among his many speeches, his address to the Law Society at its Annual Dinner in 1962 is one that gives us a glimpse of his vision at the beginning of our nation’s journey. 1 Response by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Opening of Legal Year 2015 (5 January 2015), at [16]. 1 4. In that speech, Mr Lee described the legal profession as the legal architects, whose responsibility it would be to “help shape out of the raw material available here, the ideal pattern of law to regulate … relations between subjects inter se and between subjects and the state.” Mr Lee saw law and order as inseparable elements that were necessary if we were to build a successful society. “Good laws lead to good order” but “without order, the operation of the law is impossible”, he said. In fact, Mr Lee thought it might be more correct to reverse the sequence to read order and law. 5. There is an intensely pragmatic reality in this view. As Mr Lee put it in that same speech, “the acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or grandeur of its legal concepts, but whether in fact, it is able to produce order and justice in the relationships between [subjects] and between [subjects] and the state.” As we look back over the last 53 years since that speech, we might legitimately feel that our legal system has come through that test reasonably well in affording our citizens a good measure of order and justice in these relationships. 6. But to what can this be traced? When Mr Lee referred to the “raw material” that our legal pioneers would have to work with, he was speaking of the body of laws and legal principles inherited from the British. But he recognised at the outset that it would be wrong to assume that what had been developed in another age and society would necessarily serve the needs of our society. These raw materials therefore needed to be adapted to suit our own needs and conditions rather than be blindly adopted. This was perhaps the first assertion of the importance of developing an indigenous legal system that reflects and supports the best ideals of our society. And what are those ideals? They were there from the beginning of our nationhood: equality, meritocracy, integrity, tolerance and the fair, just and practical application of the law based on what is right and not based on who is before us. 7. We would do well to keep these ideals firmly in mind as we reflect on our work as Judges and Court Administrators. 8. Let me then turn to our Workplan this year, which happens to be a unique Workplan as it is our first ‘in-house’ Workplan. There are no members of the press or external guests present today though we are pleased of course to have with us our colleagues from the Supreme Court and the Family Justice Courts. The PJSC and I discussed this last year and we thought that having in-house Workplans in alternate years would enable us to have a longer planning cycle within which to develop and implement sustainable initiatives. It also recognises the reality that some projects do have a longer gestation period and so require a longer runway. 9. This year, we celebrate our golden jubilee as a nation after 50 years of independence. This presents us with a timely occasion to recall the history of our 2 physical setting. From 1877, when the District and Magistrates’ Courts were housed in South Bridge Road until 1975, when the construction of the Subordinate Courts’ Havelock Square Complex was completed, our courts operated from various different locations, including Hong Lim Green, Havelock Road, Empress Place, New Bridge Road, the former Sepoy Lines Police Station, and Outram Road. 10. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Havelock Square Complex. It was initially built to house only 26 courtrooms; today there are 40 courtrooms which operate alongside other court-based services to cater for the full range of dispute resolution services. 11. The ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of the new State Courts Complex last year was therefore a truly momentous event. The new Complex will not only afford us a new physical space but it will be a symbol of our commitment to continue to play a vital role in our society. 12. The ground-breaking was one among a number of significant events that made this past year a watershed year. In March 2014, we were renamed the State Courts; and in October 2014, we launched the new Family Justice Courts, which became a separate judicial entity from the State Courts. The State Courts also organised several important conferences in 2014, including the Court Excellence and Judicial Cooperation Forum and the inaugural Sentencing Conference. 13. Amidst these significant changes, I am heartened that progress has continued apace on all of the Workplan initiatives we launched last year with a view to enhancing the delivery of justice. These ranged from the launch of the Progress Accountability Court, the Primary Justice Project,2 and the State Courts Centre for Dispute Resolution, to the simplification of civil processes for lower value claims. Let me trace some of the highlights: a. For the Progress Accountability Court (PAC), from September 2014 to end March 2015, 36 cases were reviewed, with a further 15 cases scheduled for review by July 2015. The number of PAC cases is expected to increase once the PAC takes on reformative training cases from this quarter. b. For the Primary Justice Project, we had 39 applications between May 2014 and March 2015. Of these, 29 were assigned to lawyers, while 10 were withdrawn. Over time, as the awareness of the PJP grows, we can expect the number of applications to rise. c. On 4 March 2015, I launched the State Courts Centre for Dispute Resolution. This will serve as the Judiciary’s node or focal point for alternative dispute 2 Under the Primary Justice Project, lawyers will provide basic legal services for their clients at a fixed fee, with the specific aim of attempting to achieve an amicable resolution through mediation or negotiation. The Primary Justice Project, which was officially launched on 9 May 2014, serves as an intermediate step between self-help and the commencement of an action in court. The Primary Justice Project is the joint effort of the State Courts, Law Society, and the Community Justice Centre. 3 resolution services for civil claims, Magistrate’s Complaints lodged at the Crime Registry, and for other relational disputes such as applications under the Protection from Harassment Act. d. As for the simplification of civil processes for lower value claims, I will touch on this a little later. 14. As we turn our attention from what has been to what is yet to come, I suggest there are three notions that will be integral to us and that should guide our thinking. These are the importance respectively of: I. Providing Tailored Justice for Court Users; II. Giving Practical Help to Court Users; and III. Engaging our Stakeholders. I. PROVIDING TAILORED JUSTICE FOR COURT USERS 15. ‘Tailored justice’ refers to the development of different pathways for the resolution of matters with different processes and emphases, depending on the nature of the cases that come before us.
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