It is too early to decide whether or not Catholic weekly The Herald’s appeal to the Federal Court would warrant a full bench sitting, since the court has yet to decide whether it would hear the case, said Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria.

He points out that the apex court has fixed Feb 24 to hear The Herald’s leave application, after which it would decide whether it would allow the appeal to be heard.

“We’d have to give leave first. We have not decided whether to give leave or not... This is a leave application, we have to go stage-by-stage. We cannot jump,” he told a press conference today after the opening ceremony of the 2014 legal year.

He added that he has looked into the leave application and felt that it does not warrant a full bench hearing, and has ordered a panel of five judges to hear the application.

To a question whether the Federal Court would allow the full bench hearing if leave is granted, Arifin refused to speculate.

“It depends on whether the leave is granted or not. I don’t think we should answer hypothetical questions,” he noted.

Arifin was asked to comment on senior lawyer Karpal Singh’s (right) call yesterday for a full bench sitting to give finality to The Herald’s case.

In a controversial decision, the Court of Appeal had ruled last October that the weekly is not allowed to use the word ‘Allah’ in its Bahasa Malaysia edition.

Karpal had argued that the full bench is necessary to bring closure to a significant case.

A full bench can comprise of up to 13 judges compared to the usual three, but has never been done before in Malaysia.

The most was a seven-member panel on a landmark case in 1997 concerning S Arulpragasam.