Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon: Opening Address at the 8th Joint Judicial Conference

Ladies and gentlemen

1.     A very good morning. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you formally to the 8^th Joint Judicial Conference. It is a privilege for my colleagues and me to be hosting this year’s conference, and I would like to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to our friends and colleagues from Brunei and Malaysia for travelling to Singapore. As I mentioned yesterday at the welcome reception, it is truly wonderful to catch up with old friends. I hope you all enjoyed our welcome and had the opportunity to renew friendships in an informal setting.

2.     For well over a decade, the JJC has served as an invaluable forum for our judiciaries to build on our natural connections and shared heritage, and to deepen our relationships while engaging in meaningful and practical discussions on topics of mutual importance. This year’s theme, “Building a Future-Ready Judiciary”, speaks to our common mission of achieving and sustaining judicial excellence in a rapidly changing world. It reminds us of our central mission and role in driving reforms to our justice systems, and invites us to envision bold and innovative ideas to meet the challenges that lie ahead of us. We will explore and unpack these ideas over the course of three panel sessions today. Let me say a few words about each session to set the stage for our discussions.

3.     The first panel will address the pivotal role that judicial communication and cooperation can play in resolving cross-border disputes. Over the years, we have seen a rise in both the incidence and complexity of such disputes. Issues of foreign law can dramatically alter the complexion of a dispute, while a multiplicity of overlapping proceedings can seriously undermine the efficient and orderly resolution of these disputes. 

4.     To respond to these trends, the courts have developed an arsenal of tools, such as the anti-suit injunction and the court-ordered stay of proceedings. These have often helped ameliorate the ill-effects of duplicative proceedings and tactical litigation, often of a satellite nature. But these mechanisms also tend to involve a single court acting alone, and they tend to culminate in the continuation of a single set of proceedings to the exclusion of others. Yet, the reality is that many disputes call not for the outright elimination of certain of the proceedings, but rather for their careful, effective and structured coordination. For example, in cross-border restructuring, secondary insolvency proceedings can play a critical role in facilitating asset recovery and protecting the interests of local creditors. And in cases of international child abduction, channels for direct judicial communication afford a reliable means for ascertaining the availability of safeguards that would facilitate the child’s safe return, such as protective measures and mirror orders.⁽¹⁾

5.     In each of these scenarios, the interests of justice are significantly advanced through the establishment and operation of frameworks for judicial communication and cooperation. One such framework is the Judicial Insolvency Network’s JIN Guidelines, which sets out principles for court-to-court communication and even for the conduct of joint hearings in courts of different jurisdictions in cases of cross-border insolvency. Justice Kannan Ramesh, who is a key member of the JIN, will speak about the value of judicial communication and cooperation from the Singapore perspective, and we look forward to the sharing by our colleagues from Brunei and Malaysia. 

6.     The second panel session will turn to judicial education, wellbeing and the role of judges in the modern judiciary. I would preface that each of these topics is of considerable significance and could in itself form the subject of a separate panel discussion. But what we hope to achieve by grouping them together is to get us to think more holistically about what it means to be a judge in a future-ready judiciary.

7.     One aspect of this concerns the professional needs and development of our judges. The judicial calling has always been one of profound purpose, and there is indeed immense satisfaction to be derived from a career dedicated to upholding justice and administering the law. But there is also much about our work that is uniquely challenging, and perhaps increasingly so. We bear the responsibility of sitting in judgment of our fellow citizens and rendering decisions that can carry life-changing consequences. The nature of our work also combines a measure of social isolation with the emotional toll of managing difficult litigants and the stress of resolving high-stakes and high-conflict disputes. And we are increasingly confronted with cases that are voluminous, complex, or that demand a degree of multidisciplinary knowledge and expertise. All of this reinforces the need to ensure that our judges receive not only ample training, but also robust support in the discharge of their duties.

8.     At the same time, the reality is that the very nature of the judicial role is evolving. We expect judges to be excellent adjudicators with strong foundations in the law and a firm commitment to the pursuit of justice. But judges are and should also be entrusted with a wider systemic role, which places them at the heart of efforts to transform our judiciaries into institutions that excel in the administration of justice. 

9.     In Singapore, we have taken steps to foster a culture where judges see themselves not only as operators of the justice system, but as owners and custodians of it, who are inspired and empowered to shape its future. I have asked Justice Kwek Mean Luck, who chairs the Singapore Judicial College’s Board of Governors, to moderate this discussion because of the extensive work he has been doing in this area, and I very much look forward to hearing the perspectives of our Malaysian and Bruneian colleagues.

10.     The third panel session will centre on the relationship between technology and access to justice. In previous editions of the JJC, we have examined technology’s transformative potential in domains such as adjudication and judicial administration, and even questioned whether artificial intelligence might one day take the place of human judges. It is timely for us to build on those conversations to consider how technology might be harnessed to assist court users as they navigate the court system.

11.     The Singapore courts have witnessed a steady rise in the number of litigants who are self-represented, making the task of enhancing their access to justice ever more pressing.⁽²⁾ I have suggested elsewhere that it may be instructive to think of this in terms of the “justice gap”, with three principal dimensions: the physical gap, the resources gap and the literacy gap.⁽³⁾ The physical gap manifests in the literal distance or difficulty that litigants encounter in accessing the institutions of justice, particularly when they must convene at a single place and time for hearings. This is closely related to the resources gap, which encompasses the burden posed by the financial and other costs that are associated with navigating the justice system and obtaining legal assistance. The literacy gap, in turn, relates to the challenges that arise from a lack of familiarity with the law and with court processes that have traditionally been designed with judges and lawyers in mind.

12.     Technology forms a key plank of our efforts in Singapore to bridge the justice gap in each of these dimensions. It has the power to demystify court processes, facilitate participation in proceedings, and ultimately strengthen confidence in the judicial process by ensuring that litigants are heard and that they feel heard.

13.     However, our drive to embrace technology is also tempered by two key considerations. The first is that access to technology is itself not uniform across society. Without thoughtful implementation, the very tools we deploy to narrow the justice gap could instead exacerbate existing disparities in what we might call the technology gap. And second, court users are themselves increasingly turning to sophisticated tools, such as generative AI, to overcome the resources and the literacy gap. This is often done without a genuine appreciation of the limits of these tools, and we have taken steps to address this by issuing guidelines on the use of AI in court proceedings, but this remains an evolving space to which we are devoting careful attention.

14.     Justice Aidan Xu, who is the Judge-in-charge of Transformation and Innovation, will share more about our experience with navigating the benefits and challenges of using AI in advancing access to justice, and once again we very much look forward to your contributions. 

15.     I think you will agree with me when I say we are in for an engaging day of discussions. I am sure our exchanges will prove to be meaningful and enriching, and I look forward to learning from all of you. Thank you very much.