The judiciary should have the correct mix of people, and these include people having a commercial background to judge such cases, says a retired Court of Appeal judge.

Justice Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof stressed that decisions or judgments in commercial cases do affect businesses, economic growth and foreign investments to the country. Therefore, the judiciary needs the right people to handle such cases.

“For commercial law, business law, securities law, maritime law, insurance, arbitration - you need people with practical experience.

“There will be people in the legal profession who may not be good enough to handle it. Hence, I am emphasising that more judges (conversant) on the business and commercial aspects (should be appointed).

"The recent appointments (of judicial commissioners) have included those with relevant experience,” Justice Ariff ( right ) noted.

Previously, judges mainly came from the Judicial and Legal Service Commission. However, more like Justice Ariff are now being pulled in from the private sector as part of public service to the nation.

Justice Ariff - who had served as a lecturer with Universiti Malaya for 11 years - entered private practice and served at the Securities Commission and Futures Trading in the 1990s, before he returned to private practice and became a judge in 2008.

He specialises in commercial law, banking and arbitration.

Justice Ariff said he kept reminding people that foreign countries are looking into and reading our commercial judgments.

'Not bookish laws'

Therefore, he pointed out that our judges have to provide sound commercial decisions “whether we like it or not”.

“Law is not a matter in deciding on bookish law, as there is a multi-dimensional aspect of the law - which includes a commercial dimension. Every aspect of the law has commercial implications.

“Economic growth is dependent on the state of our law, as the foreigners or outsiders would not only be coming into the country because we have good roads or tall buildings and so on. They would also look at our laws, our decisions and the integrity of our decisions,” he emphasised.

Hence, he noted that there is an economic aspect of the law which one should not forget - be it by our lawyers, judges, or our policy-makers.

Justice Ariff said judges should not stick wholeheartedly to black letter laws, as they must be practical enough to go with the changing business times.

He stressed that while common law is quite strict, sometimes being less uncompromising makes commercial sense.

Justice Ariff discovered that the Singapore approach, for example, made commercial sense and he had said in one of his judgments that their approach is the way to go.

He added that human rights cases also have an economic dimension to it, and that he had been happy being with other judges on several high-profile cases at the Court of Appeal.

He felt that upon his retirement, his biggest contribution lies in the area of commercial law, despite only having joined the judiciary late in 2008.