Syed Ahmad Idid: Pen judgments within a month

Judges should ideally give and deliver their written judgments within one month, respected former High Court judge Syed Ahmad Idid said today.

Syed Ahmad, who was speaking at the launching of his book ‘Writing of Judgments: A practical Guide for Courts and Tribunals’, said ideally after finishing hearing the case, you would already prepare your points.

“You should not take too long in making it while the mind is still fresh. Then you give two weeks to write the draft.

“Then you take another two weeks to rethink what you have written for a possible sudden change of mind. This is because you may have thought of something, for example, while driving. So ideally you need a month to write judgments,” he said.

The former judge said his wife Noraini Abdullah knows he would sometimes stay up until 2am to write judgments as that was the best time for writing them.

Syed Ahmad (left), who is well-known and had admitted to be the whistleblower who wrote the poison-pen letter revealing the former chief justice Eusoff Chin’s trip with a senior lawyer to New Zealand, said judges should not keep too long in writing judgments.

Asked whether today’s judges are faced with complex cases compared with before, Syed Ahmad said while on the bench he had handled criminal, securities and bank cases and even international border disputes.

He said judges have to always keep in touch and do a lot of reading.

Presently, there are many judges who take a long time in writing judgments, and some have taken eight years or more and still have yet to write them.

Some of the judges, unfortunately, have been promoted to the apex court of the country, ie the Federal Court.

Some of these concern the life of a person, where some of them are facing the death penalty. However, their appeals could not be heard because the written grounds are not ready.

Last month, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Abdul Aziz had said the written judgment to the Altantuya Shaariibuu case, which saw two Special Action Unit officers - Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar - being convicted, is not ready although it has been more than two years.

The launching of the book was performed by Chief Justice Zaki Azmi.

The book has 234 pages and Syed Ahmad took one-and-a-half years to write it with the help of a research assistant.

Syed Ahmad said he had gathered experiences from chief justices in Singapore, Indonesia and also judges of the International Court of Justice in writing the book.

He agreed judgments need not always be long in all cases but they have to be clear and concise.

'Judges should uphold the law as it is'

Syed Ahmad said judges should uphold the law as it is and not make unnecessary interpretation if it was clear in law.

He referred to the case of Batu MP Tian Chua, who was fined RM2,000, as an example, but declined to elaborate further.

In Tian Chua’s case, the PKR MP gets to keep his seat despite having been fined RM2,000.

The speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, Pandikar Amin Mulia, made the final decision in reiterating Chua is still an MP last month, despite the Court of Appeal upholding the fine in the lawmaker’s final appeal.