Reasonable Suspicion or Real Likelihood: A Question of Semantics? Re Shankar Alan s/o Anant Kulkarni

• Main Authors: LEO, Lionel, CHEN, Siyuan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: Administrative law; Bias; Asian Studies; Courts; Judges; Public Law and Legal Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/929; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/1928/viewcontent/ReasonableSuspicionRealLikelihood_2008SingJLegalStud_afv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The law on apparent bias has been mired in some controversy following the High Court decision of Re Shankar Alan s/o Anant Kulkarni, where Sundaresh Menon J.C. seemingly departed from the tentative views of Andrew Phang J.C. (as he then was) in Tang Kin Hwa v. Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Board on the issue of whether there were any material differences between the “reasonable suspicion of bias” test and the “real likelihood of bias” test, the two formulations of the test for apparent bias that have been variously adopted by different jurisdictions in the common law world. In Tang Kin Hwa, Phang J.C. expressed his tentative view that there are no practical or conceptual differences between the two tests, warning against the dangers of “semantic hairsplitting”. Sundaresh Menon J.C., on the other hand, took a different view in Re Shankar, holding that “there are indeed some important differences between [the two tests]”, and that the “reasonable suspicion of bias” test was the applicable law in Singapore “for good reason”.