The man whose judicial decapitation in 1988 set off a cascade of goings-on that eventuated in the worst crisis faced by the Malaysian judiciary is in favour of judicial review of acts of the legislature and of the executive.

Salleh Abbas, the country's chief justice (then called lord president) in 1988 when an international tribunal found him guilty of misconduct, told a forum in Kuala Lumpur on Friday that he agreed with famous British jurist Lord Denning's maxim: "The facts are yours; the law is mine," a formulation that demarcates the boundaries between the executive-cum-legislature and the judiciary.

Speaking at the forum themed 'Judicial crisis; How to stop the rot?' Salleh was addressing a perennial bone of contention: In a country with a written constitution is the legislature supreme or is the constitution, as interpreted by the judiciary, paramount?

Denning, master of concise, crystalline legal formulation, was clearly of the view that acts of the legislature that contravened the constitution, or even judge-made law, can be invalidated by judges.

Dominant leaders elected by popular majorities find the notion of judicial review repugnant because they feel that unelected judges cannot arrogate to themselves the right to reflect the will of the people.

A summary of this stance can be rendered thus: Parliament is supreme and the legislature reflects the sovereign will of the people.

Write judgments

In a brief retrospective on the prelude to his sacking, Salleh said decisions in the mid-1980s by the High Court to invalidate the cancellation of visas granted to Asian Wall Street Journal journalists who had written critical articles on a cabinet minister had set the stage for the crisis that led to his dismissal.

Salleh said then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed began to publicly inveigh against "judge-made law" - a stance that led judges to urge Salleh to respond in some fashion which, in this instance, took the form of a letter by the lord president to the King tracing the vexed question of boundaries between the executive and the judiciary.

The letter was cited at his Salleh's arraignment before the international tribunal as highly improper.

Parliamentary amendments to Article 121 in June 1988 had the effect of restricting the scope for judicial review. Decisions by the minister concerned were regarded as final and beyond judicial review.

Salleh told the forum he also strongly believed that judges should write their judgments because the very act of writing helps develop the law and that "law is life" and "it changes with time."

Salleh said by writing their opinions judges help to develop the law which does not stand still.

He said that he had found himself in recent years as a practising lawyer "I had to return to legal practice because I'm poor" arguing against judgments he had written while on the Bench.

"I did not win in those cases," he said to laughter from a packed audience of 1,000 people, but he held that his arguments were part of the process of the evolution of law.