FEDERAL court judge Zainun Ali was unduly criticised for her role in a ruling that voided the conversion of Indira Gandhi’s children, said prominent lawyer Gopal Sri Ram.

Sri Ram, a former federal court judge, said Zainun was merely doing her job when she drafted the case judgment for a five-member panel that ruled in January that the consent of both parents is needed to convert a minor.

“All she did was take principles set in the constitution. She was not breaking new ground,” Sri Ram told the International Malaysia Law Conference today.

“She was taking what was already established. Everyone thought she was making laws, but she was merely interpreting the constitution,” Sri Ram said.

The 100-page landmark judgement ruled that civil courts have exclusive and inherent jurisdiction to review the actions of a public authority.

It also ruled that Article 121(1A) does not remove the civil courts’ jurisdiction to interpret constitutional matters even when the matter is related to Islamic law.

Article 121(1A) of the federal constitution states that civil courts shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of shariah courts.

At today’s conference, Sri Ram said the Federal Court is “merely there to interpret” the constitution.

“There’s no question of judicial dynamism or judicial activism or whatever you want to call it. At the end of the day, judges interpret. If that is a sin, then it is a sin we all have to live with,” he said a plenary session on the judiciary as the principal guardian of the rule of law.

Sri Ram also criticised the failure of the judiciary over the past few decades when judges interpreted constitutional provisions “literally”.

“There was a great desire to protect the executive at one time. They (the judges) gave narrow interpretations of the constitutions,” he said, conceding that some judgements would require future generations to “effect the correction.”

Meanwhile, Court of Appeal judge Hamid Sultan Abu Backer said he was barred from presiding over public interest and constitutional cases after writing a dissenting judgement in 2016 relating to the Indira Gandhi case.

Hamid said he stood by his decision to dissent to an unidentified senior judge who reprimanded him.

“Politics or judiciary, bad habits die hard. Cosmetic changes to the judiciary may not be as constitutional solution to a judiciary which is perceived to have demonstrated judicial interference.” – August 16, 2018.