Courts Reform Programmes: The Malaysian Experience

In this paper Justice Azahar bin Mohamed (Federal Court Judge, Malaysia and 2015 Inns of Court Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies) gives a brief account, developed from a lecture at the IALS, of the Malaysian experience of transforming the judicial landscape with the introduction of new measures to tackle a massive backlog of cases and unacceptable delay in the litigation process. The author focuses on the key initiatives aimed at strengthening of judicial systems and procedures including efforts to address court management systems, procedural rules, and jurisdictional limit of courts and implementation of alternative dispute resolution. He highlights some of the accomplishments and the resulting outcomes of the reforms and sets some directions which the court should take in the future.