Malaysian Constitution Case Study

Malaysia is a Federation of 13 states with a written constitution,the Federal Constitution, which is the supreme law of the country. The rights that are written into the constitution can only be changed by a two third majority of the total number of members of the legislature. In Malaysia, laws are legislated by by parliament at Federal level and by the various State legislative assemblies at state level. Laws that are enacted by Parliament are called Acts. Parliament and the State Legislatures are not supreme. They have to enact laws subject to the provisions set out in the Federal and State constitutions. The word ‘supremacy’ shows the highest authority or rank and could even be known as being in an all-powerful position. The word ‘constitution’

If a passed law is found to be different with any provision in the constitution then it could be taken to court and challenged as unconstitutional. The Federal Constitution of Malaysia is the supreme law of federation. It is the fundamental and basic law of the land which acts as a benchmark to measure the validity of other laws. According to the article 4 of the Federal Constitution, it states that the constitution is the supreme law in the Federation and any law passed after Merdeka Day which is inconsistent with the Constitution shall be void, to the extent of its inconsistency. As in the case of PP v Dato Yap Peng, the accused was charged with criminal breach of trust. The deputy public prosecutor offered a certificate issued by the public prosecutor to transfer the case to the High Court under Section 418A of the Criminal Procedure Code. Before the High Court, the accused disagreed that Section 418A of the CPC violates Article 121(1) (before 1988) and thus unconstitutional. The majority held that, the Section 418A of CPC violated Article 121(1) of the Federal Constitution as the power to transfer cases falls under the jurisdiction of

To further reinforce this, in the case of City Council of George Town v Government of Penang, the subject argued that the laws made by the Government of Penang, which are the City Council of George Town Order 1966 and Municipal (Amendment) Enactment 1966 violated the Local Government Election Act 1960. The court held that, the laws were null and void as referred to Article 75 of the Federal Constitution which states that any state law that is inconsistent with Federal law shall be void up to its inconsistency and federal law shall prevail. Besides that, Article 162 (6) deals with any pre-Merdeka law which is inconsistent with the federal Constitution shall be continued with the necessary modifications to render it consistent with the Federal Constitution. Section 73 of the Malaysian Act 1963 then refers to pre-Malaysia laws in force on 16 September 1963 in a state which joins Malaysia on that date. This section acts as a saver from the automatic repeal all the per-Malaysia laws enacted by the states legislature. In spite of the Article 159 of the Federal Constitution