Bar Council president Karen Cheah said legislators must move beyond traditional methods towards a system that was more proactive in developing new laws and reviewing current legislation to keep up with the times.
In backing Pengerang MP Azalina Othman Said’s earlier call for the setting up of such a commission, Cheah said: “We need law reforms relating to environmental issues such as carbon offsets, which is currently unregulated.”
The advent of new technologies meant new laws were needed, including those relating to digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFT), she added.
An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos which are bought and sold online.
“In Malaysia, there is no law to authorise an entity to present well-researched and thought-out recommendations to Parliament on possible reforms to our country’s laws,” said Cheah at a forum organised by the Bar Council on the need for a law reform commission.
In June, Azalina had said a commission was needed to study and review 147 legislations that were deemed archaic.
The former special adviser on law and human rights to the prime minister said the commission would complement the work of the attorney-general and increase the efficiency of the law-making process.
Cheah said without an independent commission, archaic laws would still be in existence despite their irrelevance to present times. She cited as examples the Sedition Act 1948 and the National Security Council Act 2016, which she described as draconian, unjust and oppressive.
Also, the lack of independence when such laws were formulated and enacted was an issue of real concern to the Malaysian Bar, as these new laws and amendments originated from individual ministries or agencies and lacked input from civil society and other stakeholders.
When ministries were beholden to the executive, there was potential for partiality and a political slant to the laws, she added.
The chairman of the Bar Council’s law reform and special areas committee, M Ramachelvam, said the need for an independent law commission was a no-brainer, adding that countries such as India and South Africa had very robust law commissions which came up with numerous law reforms.
The Bar Council had already drafted legislation on a Law Commission Act, which would enable the review of current laws, drafting and formulating of new laws and making recommendations for new legislation, he said.
Another panel member, Universiti Malaya’s Shad Saleem Faruqi said the commission needed to be people-centred and include representatives from the marginalised communities.
This, the constitutional law expert added, was to provide holistic law reforms for problems such as poverty, economic disparity and gender discrimination that were systemic and structural in nature.
Meanwhile, Suhakam commissioner and former judge Hishamudin Yunus said it was impossible for Parliament alone to monitor every area of the law and hence many countries had established independent law reform bodies.
There were about 60 law commissions in the world, including in countries such as Malawi, Samoa and Kenya, said Hishamudin.