Recently, the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, Zaki Azmi, was reported to have advised counsel appearing in court that they “cannot expect good judgments unless they themselves come out with convincing, logical arguments”.

I beg His Lordship’s indulgence to respond thus:

It is true that good grounds of judgment or decision germinate from the seeds of thoroughly-researched and well-presented arguments and submissions. But that is only one half of the story. The second half lies in the writing ability of the judge himself or herself.

With respect, many of our judges on the Bench today can hardly write a judgment coherent enough to save their own lives. How can their Lordships possibly expound the law if they do not have the language with which to do it?

How else does one propound the law except through the sagacious use of language? Sign language?

The systemic symptom of this impediment is that our judges have stopped developing the law, wittingly or unwittingly; they just apply it nowadays.

Surely, it cannot be that we no longer have in this country the likes of HT and HS Ong, Eusoffee, Azlan Shah, Hashim Yeop Sani, Jemuri, Edgar, Ram, NH, Vincent and even Hamid Omar - just to name a few who come to mind. We have not regressed, have we? No. The fact is that people of such calibre are not being appointed or elevated as frequently or as regularly as they once used to be.

I have been scuttling around the corridors long enough to tell you, without fear or favour, that the standard has dropped with every passing decade, and continues to so.

Owing to the grievous linguistic limitations of our judges today, the expository dimension of our laws is in grave danger of legal stagnation.