Justice Steven Chong: Speech delivered at the Asia Pacific Judicial Colloquium 2023

ASIA PACIFIC JUDICIAL COLLOQUIUM 2023

“The importance of developing an effective public
communications and outreach strategy for courts and what this
might consist of”
The Honourable Justice Steven Chong
Supreme Court of Singapore⁽¹⁾

I. Introduction

1                 In recent years, the Singapore courts have taken it upon themselves to conduct annual public perception surveys. Members of the public are posed numerous questions centring on their level of confidence in the legal system and the extent to which they consider justice to be impartially administered. I wish to put aside the results of these surveys and pose the anterior question of why our courts have undertaken these efforts in the first place.

2                 Clearly, our courts have done so to uncover the degree to which the public considers the Judiciary to be an unbiased, accessible, and efficient institution, and to keep a pulse on longitudinal change. At a deeper level, however, these efforts reflect how important public perception of the Judiciary is to the courts.

3                 In particular, public confidence in the Judiciary is paramount. The acceptance of judicial decisions is essential for social stability and good governance, and this rests not upon coercion but the public’s confidence in the integrity of the Judiciary.⁽²⁾ This conviction, however, has started to reveal signs of fraying. In the present day, the Judiciary is increasingly called upon to adjudicate on polarising social issues, and disgruntled litigants or members of the public often turn to social media to misrepresent the court’s decision in pursuit of their agendas. These persons are, unfortunately, assisted by the ubiquity of social media, the speed at which information is disseminated, and the difficulties members of the public face in deciphering legalese.

4                 Against this backdrop, my central thesis today is that the traditional attitude of the courts that a judgment should speak for itself is no longer viable. Judicial silence in the public sphere may have traditionally been thought to strengthen the court’s image of independence and impartiality⁽³⁾ but the courts can no longer stay silent amidst the uptick in misinformation or disinformation concerning the court’s decisions or role, and the speed with which they are spread. Nor can the courts adopt a purely reactionary stance as proactive engagement is far more effective than ex post facto damage control.

5                 Rather, the courts must now develop an effective public communications and outreach strategy. This both prevents the erosion of public confidence in the Judiciary by inaccurate representations of court processes and outcomes, and cultivates public trust that the Judiciary is committed to the rule of law even – and especially – in contentious cases where the values of a community may pull in different directions. The reality is that we “must refine and modernise our vision and understanding of the judicial role, if we are to remain able to administer justice effectively and to help maintain order and legitimacy in our societies”.⁽⁴⁾ This, as I will elaborate, is especially vital in crafting and shaping an effective public communications and outreach strategy.

6                 I will develop this thesis in four main parts:

 

1. I first discuss why it has become imperative for the courts to develop an effective public communications and outreach strategy.
2. Next, I posit that an effective public communications and outreach strategy must be one tailored to local conditions. No two countries are alike. Each Judiciary occupies a unique space within its country’s constitutional architecture and speaks to a unique audience. An understanding of a jurisdiction’s cultural, political, and social history is vital to an effective public communications strategy for the courts.
3. I will then expound on some initiatives which the Singapore courts have implemented to communicate effectively with our public, and explain how these are tailored to our local conditions. Different approaches have been adopted depending on the issue at hand, the purpose of communication, and the intended audience.
4. Finally, I will briefly outline how the Singapore Judiciary’s public communications strategy has evolved to keep pace with changes in our organisational structure as well as in broader society.

 

II. The importance of developing an effective public communications and outreach strategy for the courts

7                 It is helpful to first understand why developing an effective public communications and outreach strategy has grown to be a matter of importance for the courts. After all, the courts’ principal role is to decide disputes, and information on the nature of disputes as well as the courts’ reasons for its decisions is already available in the public domain. I have also alluded to the body of opinion in favour of judicial silence in the public sphere. Richard Davis, for instance, notes that judicial silence may be said to underpin images of judicial independence and distance and facilitate institutional objectives of deference and compliance.⁽⁵⁾

8                 The starting point is to recognise that public confidence and trust in the Judiciary is paramount. As Alexander Hamilton famously observed, whereas the executive “dispenses the hono[u]rs” and “holds the sword of the community” and the legislature “commands the purse [and] prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated”, the Judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse” but may be said to have “merely judgment”.⁽⁶⁾ Justice Stephen Breyer put the same point another way; in his book Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View, he jokingly termed the Judiciary an “inoffensive, technical and comparatively powerless” body.⁽⁷⁾ The public’s willingness to turn to the Judiciary to resolve their disputes amicably and accept judicial rulings is essential for the peace and good governance of a society, and this rests entirely on public confidence in the integrity of the Judiciary.

9                 For this reason, our highest court has repeatedly cautioned against litigants making wanton allegations of judicial bias. We have done so not simply because unwarranted aspersions of this nature waste valuable court time and resources,⁽⁸⁾ but because they have the potential to undermine public confidence in the administration of justice.⁽⁹⁾

10                 Worryingly, however, trust in public institutions has rapidly deteriorated. The United Nations found that the percentage of people across 62 countries expressing confidence or trust in their governments declined from an average of 46 percent in 2006 to 36 percent by 2019.⁽¹⁰⁾ This decline is particularly stark in the United States where just 24 percent of surveyed persons expressed trust in the American government in 2021 as compared to 73 percent in 1958. The recently released 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer similarly found that distrust has become “society’s default emotion”, with 6 in 10 people indicating that their default tendency is to distrust information.⁽¹¹⁾

11                 Notwithstanding its status as an independent arbiter of disputes, the Judiciary has not been immune to the breakdown of trust in public institutions. Last year, Gallup reported that the American public’s confidence in their Supreme Court was at a historical low.⁽¹²⁾ The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center likewise reported a growing perception amongst the American public that the Supreme Court is a partisan body that does not operate in their best interests.⁽¹³⁾ These are deeply worrying trends that threaten the rule of law. Without trust in the Judiciary, individuals have little incentive to amicably resolve their disputes through the legal process or comply with court orders that go against their personal interests. To distrust the Judiciary, Balzac warned, marks the beginning of the end of society.⁽¹⁴⁾

12                 There are several interrelated reasons for the public’s declining trust in the Judiciary. First, politics has become perniciously polarised. Much ink has been spilt on the causes of political polarisation, but amongst these, the growing influence of identity politics and the echo-chambers engendered by social media bear mentioning.

13                 Concurrently (or perhaps as a consequence of political polarisation), the Judiciary is increasingly called upon to adjudicate on socially divisive issues. Just last year, the Singapore Court of Appeal was called to rule on the constitutionality of a statutory provision criminalising sexual acts between males. We observed that this provision “had been a lightning rod for polarisation, in large part because it raise[d] a wider question, which admit[ted] of no ready answers, of how a State can best maintain harmony between different communities with deeply held, and sometimes conflicting, views on important issues of moral conscience”.⁽¹⁵⁾ Barely a few months earlier, we were charged with determining the constitutionality of a statutory provision empowering the Government to direct persons who had perpetrated falsehoods to publicly publish correction notices.⁽¹⁶⁾ This case raised the thorny question of whether an individual’s right to freedom of speech under the Constitution encompassed a right to communicate misinformation. Socially divisive issues have increasingly been the subject of litigation, and the binary nature of litigation means that persons who affiliate themselves with the “losing” party are invariably aggrieved by the outcome, and may erroneously perceive the Judiciary to favour a particular conception of politics opposed to theirs.

14                 Secondly, in recent times, truth has become increasingly devalued. Objective facts may now be less influential in shaping belief than appeals to affiliation and emotion. Professor Jonathan Haidt points to cognitive biases being an important reason for this phenomenon. He posits that whilst individuals like to believe that their judgments are grounded in logic, they tend to form views based on their intuition before marshalling the evidence in a manner favourable to these preconceived assessments.⁽¹⁷⁾ I would add that the information revolution – which has allowed anyone to spread misinformation or disinformation instantaneously to a boundless audience – and the erosion of trust in authority have entrenched these biases, and contributed to the increasing distrust of judicial decisions.⁽¹⁸⁾

15                 Let me provide an example. In the United States, after the Supreme Court overruled federally protected access to abortion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization,⁽¹⁹⁾ numerous articles purported to fact-check the decision. An article published by PolitiFact suggested that Justice Alito had ignored the court’s previous judgments on the scope and content of the 14th Amendment and his survey of the prohibition of abortion “lack[ed] important context”.⁽²⁰⁾ Another article published by the New York Times went so far as to state that Justice Alito “misleadingly cite[d] court precedent” and “cite[d] outdated science and questionable common law”.⁽²¹⁾ I consider these articles to be symptomatic of the increasing tendency to discount or dismiss facts that sit uncomfortably with one’s conception of the world. Judgments are, in present times, less likely to be accepted as the truth, and this erodes the authority and legitimacy of the Judiciary.

16                 The public’s declining trust in the Judiciary throws the importance of the courts developing an effective public communications and outreach strategy into sharp relief. In light of the number of socially contentious issues now subject of litigation, and the ease with which misinformation or disinformation is spread, the traditional attitude of the courts that a judgment should speak for itself is no longer viable. Rather, it behoves the courts, as guardians of the rule of law and the institution whose decisions are being misrepresented, to foster confidence in the public that the Judiciary is steadfastly committed to the values of independence and integrity. And in this regard, the courts can leverage the very tools that are so effective in fomenting distrust such as social media to cultivate public confidence in the Judiciary.

17                 The reasons undergirding the public’s declining trust in the Judiciary suggest that an effective public communications strategy is one which is proactive rather than reactive in nature. In the social media era, it is all too easy for disgruntled litigants or members of the public to widely disseminate falsehoods in pursuit of their agendas without the need for any proper verification. It remains difficult for non-legally trained persons to understand the contours of a legal dispute or the reasons for a court’s decision, and simply reacting to false information would be ineffective because harm would have already been caused to public confidence in the administration of justice. Trust in public authority takes years to cultivate but only moments to destroy, as can be gleaned from the OECD Trust Survey which found that it took governments more than a decade to regain public trust lost in the aftermath of the 2008 Economic Crisis.⁽²²⁾

III. An effective public communications and outreach strategy is one tailored to the local landscape

18                 Let me now move on to what an effective public communications and outreach strategy might consist of. At its core, an effective strategy must be one tailored to local conditions. Justice may be a universal concept, but each Judiciary occupies a particular space within its country’s constitutional architecture and communicates with an audience unique in its level of literacy, degree of racial and/or religious homogeneity, and historical relationship with the Judiciary.

19                 This is, of course, not to say that the courts in different jurisdictions do not grapple with the same challenges to public confidence in the Judiciary. Nor that their responses invariably diverge. After all, global trends such as the technological revolution, the democratisation of information, and the decay of truth are matters that all courts have had to contend with.

20                 A survey of the efforts undertaken by different courts reveals that all Judiciaries have introduced official communications channels through which they broadcast their decisions, and summaries of these decisions. It is safe to say that all Judiciaries are also cognisant that most members of the public neither have the time nor the inclination to attend hearings or peruse court records,⁽²³⁾ and hence the introduction of official communications channels has also been accompanied by efforts to explain and broadcast court proceedings and decisions through more accessible forms of media.

21                 Indeed, courts from jurisdictions as diverse as the US, the UK, Australia, South Korea, and Indonesia have all established social media platforms to respond to the growing number of citizens who receive and comment on news via these platforms. Whilst in 2017 the Australian High Court had “neither a Twitter nor Facebook presence”, with one commentator suggesting that this reflected its preference for choosing its words precisely as compared to distilling information into tweets or sound bites,⁽²⁴⁾ the court ventured into the Twitter-sphere and utilised social media to broadcast its judgments and case summaries just a few years later.⁽²⁵⁾ In this connection, former Chief Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court Marilyn Warren publicly observed that technology and social media now provide the courts an exhilarating opportunity to tell the public who they serve, who they are, what they do, how they do it, and why the rule of law matters.⁽²⁶⁾ Similarly, the UK Supreme Court now provides real-time alerts on judgments and other court news via its Twitter account.⁽²⁷⁾

22                 Another commonality is a deliberate effort to portray court processes and decisions in a simple and digestible format. Summaries and infographics are now mainstays of judicial communications strategies. This is in part due to the need to demystify technical judgments, but also because the average human attention span has significantly shrunk, standing at just eight seconds in 2022,⁽²⁸⁾ and bite-sized information has emerged as an effective and necessary means of communication.

23                 Nevertheless, even as courts implement common public communications strategies, their precise modalities are shaped both by the cultural, political, and social history of the jurisdiction within which a Judiciary is situated as well as the character of the intended audience.

24                 This is most evident in how various courts have leveraged traditional media (such as the print media, television, and radio) to instil public confidence in the Judiciary. To provide an example, the Indonesian Constitutional Court and the UK Supreme Court have both sought to explain the nature of their work to the public through televised interviews with sitting Judges. The former collaborated with TVRI, an Indonesian public broadcaster, to have its Justices appear on a weekly talk show titled Forum Konstitusi, and also arranged for its Chief Justices to provide televised interviews.⁽²⁹⁾ The latter worked with the BBC to produce a documentary on the UK Supreme Court, with four of the then-Justices appearing on the programme to speak about how they interpret statutory provisions and make decisions.⁽³⁰⁾ Yet even as both Judiciaries have relied upon televised documentaries and interviews to explain the nature of their work, they have done so in slightly different respects and for qualitatively distinct purposes.

25                 The interviews provided by the former Chief Justices of the Indonesian Constitutional Court are unique in that these Chief Justices have taken it upon themselves to explain specific court rulings to the media. Former Chief Justice Jimly Asshiddiqie held press briefings with reporters to discuss and explain specific cases, which practice was continued by his successor, Chief Justice Mohammad Mahfud, who provided media interviews to explain why the court had struck down State Ministry Law in a particular case.⁽³¹⁾

26                 This practice of the Judiciary publicly explaining specific court rulings is best understood in light of the history of the Indonesian Constitutional Court. This court has a relatively recent history, having been established in the wake of the 2001 Indonesian political upheaval, and was the first court of the land with the authority to judicially review statutory legislation. In its early years – and particularly in the wake of its decision to declare retrospective legislation passed to deal with the Bali bombings terrorists unconstitutional – it faced the challenge of explaining its authority to constitutionally invalidate statutes to the public. Given this history, it was imperative for the court to legitimise its standing and function in the eyes of the public, and it sought to do so by having its Chief Justices directly explain landmark decisions to the public through televised interviews.

27                 The UK Supreme Court has, in contrast, a long and established history. The emphasis of the televised interviews with Justices was therefore not so much on the court’s authority to make certain decisions, but how by its decisions, it contributes to the separation of powers, and a healthy and functioning democracy. These media interviews also tackled the topical issue of diversity in the UK Supreme Court amidst growing concerns that the court was not representative of the population and was detached from issues on the ground. Baroness Hale was then the only woman on the court, and the only Justice who had been educated at a non-fee-paying school, and she publicly shared her views on the efforts the UK Supreme Court (as well as lower courts) were then undertaking to become a more diverse and representative institution. In a similar vein, the Chief Justice of Canada holds an annual press conference to provide updates on the court’s work.⁽³²⁾

28                 That the courts’ public communications strategies are informed by local conditions is also evinced by the slight variations in and different emphases of social media strategies employed by the various courts. In Australia, for instance, a lawyer or a member of the approved media is permitted by the Supreme Court of South Australia to communicate with the public via social media during court proceedings.⁽³³⁾ This is in part a response to the sharp rise of citizen journalism in Australia, which has at once democratised the sources of news, but also led to lay members of the public misrepresenting court matters unwittingly by failing to communicate the full nuances of a judgment or deliberately in a nefarious effort to further their agendas. The Supreme Court of South Australia has sought to pre-empt these undesirable aspects of citizen journalism by granting the lawyers involved in the case or members of approved media outlets first bite of the social media cherry, which then helps to shape the bounds of public social media discourse.

29                 Turning to South Korea, the emergence of social media as the public’s dominant means of consuming news has prompted its Judiciary to publicise and explain its judicial decisions, policies, and operational philosophy through this medium. To assist itself in this endeavour, the South Korean Judiciary employs Social Media Specialists attuned to the social media habits and preferences of the population. These specialists adeptly present information in an eye-catching and digestible format, manage the wide dissemination of content across all major social media platforms, and work closely with Public Relations Specialists, who are themselves judges, to ensure that the information broadcasted to the public is meaningfully captured and accurately portrayed.⁽³⁴⁾ The South Korean Judiciary’s communication strategy, like that of the Australian Judiciary’s, is a response to a shift in its media landscape, but stands apart in that it is a specific response to the emergence of social media as the dominant form of media consumption in the country.

30                 Drawing the threads together, my brief comparative survey would show that judicial communication is most effective when the purpose of communication and the dynamic between Judiciary and populace as informed by the jurisdiction’s social, cultural, and historical political history are brought to bear on the endeavour.

IV. The Singapore courts’ public communications and outreach strategy

31                 With this in mind, I come to the third part of my presentation, the Singapore Judiciary’s public communications and outreach strategy. It comes as no surprise that the Singapore Judiciary has designed its public communications strategy to foster trust and confidence in the Judiciary in both the legal community and the general populace. Our strategy is dynamic and context-specific, with different approaches being adopted depending on the issue at hand, the purpose of communication, and the target audience. Underpinning this strategy is an awareness of and sensitivity to our local conditions, of which a few bear mentioning.

32                 Like most nations, Singapore has not been exempted from the rise and influence of social media. Our population of approximately 5.92 million now counts 5.51 million social media users, with this number projected to rise to 5.67 million by the end of this year.⁽³⁵⁾ Patterns of news consumption have concomitantly shifted, with social media and messaging applications such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram and video sharing platforms like YouTube becoming major sources of news for a growing number of users.⁽³⁶⁾

33                 Next, migrant workers who largely work in the construction and marine shipyard industry or provide domestic help in households comprise about one-fifth of Singapore’s resident population, and form a substantial and vital component of the nation’s workforce.⁽³⁷⁾ These workers are relatively disadvantaged in terms of access to resources, and it is also increasingly common for them to be victims of abuse, suffer workplace injuries, or be entangled in disputes concerning their pay. The Singapore government is constantly reviewing its framework to ensure sufficient protection for these workers whose welfare is not just critical for the growth and development of our society, but is a matter of immense independent value. It is therefore imperative that these workers have faith in the integrity and efficiency of the Judiciary. Only then will they be willing to turn to the courts as a legitimate channel of remediation to address their grievances in a fair and systematic manner that will in turn enhance their collective well-being.

34                 These migrant workers would have to leave Singapore when their work permits expire or are cancelled by their employers making it very difficult for them to pursue their claims against their employers for unpaid salaries, personal injuries etc upon expiry of their work permits. Such workers may be granted a special pass which allows them to remain in Singapore pending the resolution of their legal claims. However, this special pass regime had its limitations. Workers holding special passes were not permitted to work. The potential loss of income over a significant period of time can disincentivise migrant workers from pursuing their legitimate legal claims. To enhance access to justice for these workers, our Ministry of Manpower working in consultation with our State Courts recently implemented the Temporary Job Scheme to permit them to find paid employment whilst they assist in the investigation or act as witnesses in court cases. For those who choose to return home before their legal disputes are fully resolved, they can participate in legal proceedings by remote hearings and continue to pursue their legal claims without being physically present in Singapore. Interpretation services are also provided remotely to ensure that non-English speakers can meaningfully participate in the legal proceedings.

35                 Additionally, 80% of Singapore’s population lives in public housing flats built by the Government.⁽³⁸⁾ These flats cluster to form vibrant towns that integrate commercial, recreational, and social amenities. Pertinently, the Singapore Government has begun to provide government-related services to the population through select public housing hubs. These include frontline court services such as the processing of maintenance enforcement applications. The Singapore public housing hubs have thus grown into spaces where a significant number of denizens interact with the legal system, and evolved into effective nodes of public communication for the Judiciary.

36                 Finally, the number of unrepresented litigants in the Singapore courts has steadily increased in recent years.⁽³⁹⁾ The causes of this are complex, but chief among them are burgeoning income inequality and the increasing costs of legal representation and litigation.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem, with the number of bankruptcy applications hitting a 17-year high in 2022 after the tapering of the Government’s financial assistance.⁽⁴¹⁾ It is not uncommon for litigants to now represent themselves in family, matrimonial, personal injury, bankruptcy or criminal proceedings. Unrepresented parties have considerable difficulties navigating court proceedings. They struggle with legal doctrine and puzzle over procedure, particularly as the common law adversarial system proscribes the judge, as neutral decision-maker, from taking too active a role in proceedings.⁽⁴²⁾ The concern is that self-represented persons go away from court feeling as if they were not heard or accorded a fair chance to participate in proceedings, and thereby lose confidence in the judiciary. Whether that is attributed to the esoteric nature of court proceedings or any perceived shortcoming on a judicial officer’s part is beside the point because in either event, it will impact on public confidence in the judiciary. It is critical that court findings are accepted in the public sphere as generally reflecting the truth. Otherwise, court rulings would become just another voice in an endless clamour of opinion on the merits of the disputes.⁽⁴³⁾

37                 This brings me to the concrete measures implemented by the Singapore Judiciary to foster public confidence in the institution. To begin, in cases of public importance, the Court of Appeal has made a conscious effort to explain the contours of the dispute in its written judgment. We have done so to minimise the risk of the public misunderstanding the import of the court’s decision. In the case concerning the constitutionality of a statutory provision criminalising sexual acts between males, our Chief Justice devoted a significant portion of his written grounds to explain what the case was not about. He stressed that the appeals had nothing to do with whether the criminal provision should be retained or repealed (that being a matter beyond the court’s remit), the moral worth of homosexual individuals, or the fundamental nature of sexual orientation, which was an extra-legal question well beyond the purview of the courts.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Let me provide another example. A few years ago, a high-profile case concerning the criminal liability of several leaders of a megachurch who had misappropriated church funds came to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal eventually held that the accused persons could not be prosecuted under a provision which whilst providing for an enhanced term of imprisonment, was confined to criminal breach of trust committed by professional agents and not by lay custodians of the church funds. Relevantly, the Court of Appeal explained at the outset why it could not give in to public anger over the conduct of the accused persons, and had to remain guided by the statutory language in coming to its decision.⁽⁴⁵⁾ These are considered efforts undertaken by our highest court to minimise any risk of the public misunderstanding the court’s decision.

38                 In conjunction with this, the Singapore Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to prepare summaries of cases. We are keenly aware that published judgments remain a daunting read for members of the public and have hence produced abridged versions of cases and published these on our website. We consider this useful for the internet-savvy public to gain a quick and accurate understanding of a dispute, and also facilitative of the media’s efforts to accurately report judicial decisions under time-pressure.

39                 Beyond these media summaries, the Supreme Court also proactively engages the media. It conducts regular briefings for journalists to help them understand our court processes and initiatives. Prior to the opening of each legal year, the Supreme Court briefs journalists on the key messages to be delivered by the Chief Justice, which often touch on recent and future efforts to improve access to justice. Ad hoc engagements are also common. These aim to inform journalists of important legal developments, for instance, the launch of the Judicial Insolvency Network and also seek to ensure that coverage of our decisions reaches the relevant stakeholders. Where insolvency-related decisions are rendered, for example, our media relations team reaches out to financial news outlets such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg, and works with them to ensure that the nuances of a decision, as well as legal propositions with implications on the commercial environment are accurately communicated to the business community.

40                 The measures I have sketched out thus far pertain to the Judiciary’s efforts to ensure that legal decisions are accurately and effectively conveyed to the relevant stakeholders. They are borne of an awareness that different judgments attract the interests of different stakeholders, and take into account the limited attention span of the average person in the modern age. In working directly with media outlets and providing them with an in-house summary of each case, the Judiciary has further sought to facilitate accurate reporting of its decisions and to pre-empt the spread of misinformation or disinformation amongst the population.

41                 I move on now to outline some steps our Judiciary has undertaken to engage the populace in public spaces with the same intent of fostering confidence in the Judiciary. These efforts do not directly pertain to decisions laid down by the courts, but aim to cultivate a general understanding of court processes and the constitutional role of the Judiciary amongst the public. After all, several studies have shown that public knowledge about the courts is closely linked to public trust in the institution.⁽⁴⁶⁾

42                 Something exciting in the works is what the Supreme Court has termed the “Conversations with Community” initiative. This project entails sitting members of our bench speaking to the public bimonthly over a year on a range of topics such as the role of courts in our society, restructuring, insolvency and bankruptcy in a post-COVID-19 world, therapeutic justice, and the rule of law. These talks will be held in public spaces, namely the local universities, and the targeted engagement of the media I had spoken in the context of publicising our judicial decisions will also be adopted for this initiative. The Supreme Court has carefully considered who the most relevant stakeholders for each talk are and sought their attendance. Thus, the Singapore Chambers of Commerce, the National Employers’ Federation, the Association of Banks Singapore are some of the stakeholders invited to Justice Kannan Ramesh’s speech on insolvency law in a post-COVID-19 World. And when Justice Debbie Ong speaks on the court’s philosophy of family justice in May 2023, representatives from the National Council of Social Services, the Institute of Mental Health, Inter-Religious Organisations, and the Singapore Association for Counselling will be in attendance.

43                 At the same time, we wish to avoid preaching to the choir, and have taken deliberate steps to reach out to overlooked communities such as the migrant worker community I had earlier mentioned. Allied to the “Conversations with Community” initiative are talks organised by the Family Justice Court. These are held within the Singapore heartlands and aim to educate disadvantaged communities on their legal rights, the legal process, and who they may reach out to for legal assistance. As our Chief Justice recently observed, our communications and outreach efforts will only be effective if there is a substratum of goodwill towards our courts in our societies, and this will fall away if our justice systems are perceived to be the preserve of a privileged few.⁽⁴⁷⁾

44                 We have also sought to imbue knowledge of and confidence in the Judiciary amongst our youth. To this end, the Judiciary has developed interactive Heritage Galleries in both the State and Supreme Courts. These galleries allow school-going children (who all visit the Supreme Court under the auspices of the Ministry of Education’s National Education Programme) to explore the history and progress of the Judiciary, in particular, the integral role of the courts in nation-building, through an interactive and media-rich experience. Going further, the Judiciary has proposed to the Ministry of Education that the excursion to the Supreme Court be integrated with a visit to Parliament, which is located just next to the court. In our view, such an experience will bring the various branches of government and the independence of the Judiciary to life. I should also mention that the Judiciary is in the process of introducing a virtual tour of the Supreme Court on its website and is separately developing a mobile application to allow individuals (and especially our youth) to learn more about the role of the courts. While these initiatives were prompted by the disruptions caused by the pandemic, they are also efforts to ensure that we remain technologically relevant.

45                 Let me now touch on the provision of legal services within the public housing hubs I had earlier mentioned. The Singapore Judiciary has begun to make frontline court services available at community touchpoints. Maintenance enforcement applications can now be filed in two citizen hubs, with more to come in the future. Where services sought by citizens are presently not provided for, service staff at these hubs are trained to connect them with subject matter experts located within the courts. It is our hope that these efforts to assist our populace with legal matters will reduce the number of hurdles and costs unrepresented litigants face in navigating the justice system.

46                 Fundamentally, our various initiatives seek to cultivate public knowledge of our justice system and foster trust that our courts are engaged in the fair and honest quest for the truth. I have attempted to demonstrate through these examples how the Singapore Judiciary has done so in a manner sensitive to our local conditions. At the end of the day, it is the citizens’ confidence in the Judiciary that enables it to function effectively.

V. Evolution in our public communications and outreach strategy

47                 I move on now to the final segment of my paper, and the idea that an effective public communications strategy must evolve to keep pace with change. In Singapore, our Judiciary’s public communications strategy has adapted to changes in our organisational structure as well as developments in broader society.

48                 A significant and recent development has been the “One Judiciary Initiative” under which the State Courts, Family Justice Courts, and the Supreme Court have integrated their administrative processes and publicly communicate as a single entity. With this shift, the Judiciary has now implemented a “no wrong door policy” such that members of the public may make enquiries at any of the aforementioned courts even if the matter they seek assistance with does not strictly fall within the purview of that particular court. Beyond this, we have taken steps to allow court users to deal with matters concerning the Singapore Mediation Centre or the Community Justice Centre within our courts. This not only reflects the growth of alternative dispute resolution, and our philosophy that litigation may not always be the most appropriate avenue for redress,⁽⁴⁸⁾ but dovetails with the rise in the number of unrepresented litigants and their holistic needs. The Judiciary in the final analysis provides a vital service to its users, and public confidence in the judicial system can be bolstered by reducing the obstacles that stand in the way of our users’ experience.

49                 Other specific measures that we have implemented to address the needs of the increasing number of unrepresented litigants include creating a new e-service for simplified track divorce applications, working with the Singapore Academy of Law on a motor accident outcome simulator which will aid parties assess the possible attribution of responsibility and damages in motor outcome cases, and preparing a simplified infographic to guide litigants-in-person through virtual court hearings. At heart, we aim to ensure that persons who are unable to afford legal representation do not walk away from the courts feeling that they have been denied justice on account of their indigence.

50                 Finally, on the social media front, the Supreme Court is now working with media agencies to translate key points of important judgments into bite-sized infographics that lend clarity to otherwise dense and confusing information. This constitutes an evolution of our media summary, and has been deliberately implemented to respond to the changing news consumption habits of our citizens. Indeed, whilst the Media Summary has enhanced the accuracy of reports on judgments put out by news outlets, one issue that has remained is the tendency for reporters to gravitate to the controversial aspects of a judgment or quote a judgment out of context. Our courts, like the South Korean courts, have sought to address this by putting out our own social media content and posts.

51                 Conclusion

52                 The need to develop an effective public communications and outreach strategy for the courts is a pressing one in modern times. I hope that I have advanced some ideas of what this may consist of. And whilst my paper has largely focused on the efforts of the Singapore Judiciary to cultivate public confidence in the courts, let me leave you with one final thought – that any effective communications strategy must not be a one-way exercise of delivering our messages to the public. Ending as I began with the public perception surveys, it is equally important for the Judiciary to continually invite queries and feedback from the public to sharpen our sense of the ground. Only then may a court’s public communications and outreach strategy be a truly effective one.

---

^{(1)       I wish to acknowledge the valuable assistance of my law clerk, Mr Sean Koh, in the research and preparation of this paper.
(2)       Murray Gleeson, Public Confidence in the Judiciary, Judicial Conference of Australia (27 April 2002).
(3)       Anat Peleg, Bryna Bogoch, Silence is no Longer Golden: Media, Public Relations and the Judiciary in Israel, Onati Socio-legal Series, 4(4) 819–835.
(4)       The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, The role of the judiciary in a changing world, Supreme Court of India Day Lecture Series, 1st Annual Lecture, 4 February 2023.
(5)       Richard Davis, Decisions and Images: The Supreme Court and the Press, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1994.
(6)       Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No 78, New York, Random House.
(7)       Stephen Breyer and Luis Moreno, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View, Prince Frederick, MD, Recorded Books, 2010.
(8)       BOI v BOJ [2018] 2 SLR 1156 at [141].
(9)       See BOI v BOJ [2018] 2 SLR 1156 at [141]; Noor Azlin bte Abdul Rahman and another v Changi General Hospital Pte Ltd [2021] 2 SLR 440 at [118]; Panchalai a/p Supermaniam and another v Public Prosecutor [2022] 2 SLR 507 at [26].
(10)       United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Trust in public institutions: Trends and implications for economic security (Policy Brief No 108), June 2021.
(11)       2022 Edelman Trust Barometer: The Trust 10; 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Report, p 19.
(12)       Jeffrey M. Jones, Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low, Gallup, 23 June 2022.
(13)       Annenberg Public Policy Center, 2022 Judicial Branch Survey.
(14)       Otto Kirschheimer, Political Justice 175 (1961).
(15)       Tan Seng Kee v Attorney-General and other appeals [2022] 1 SLR 1347 at [3].
(16)       The Online Citizen Pte Ltd v Attorney-General and another appeal and other matters [2021] 2 SLR 1358.
(17)       Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion, Pantheon Books, 2012.
(18)       The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, After the Fall of Babel: The Courts in a Post-Truth World, Supreme and Federal Courts’ Judges Conference 2023.
(19)       Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization 142 S.Ct. 2228 (2022).
(20)       Jon Greeberg and Amy Sherman, Fact-checking 5 claims in the final Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade (24 June 2022).
(21)       Jeremy Stahl, We Read Alito’s 98-Page Leaked Opinion. Here are the Most Shocking Lines, Slate (5 May 2022).
(22)       OECD, Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy: Main Findings from the 2021 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions.
(23)       Right Honourable Beverly McLachlin PC, The Relationship Between the Courts and the Media, 31 January 2012.
(24)       Rachel Spencer, Communication beyond the Judgments: The Australian High Court, Speaking for Itself, but not Tweeting in Justices and Journalists (Richard Davis, David Taras), Cambridge University Press, 2017.
(25)       High Court of Australia, Annual Report 2020-21 at p 24.
(26)       Chief Justice Marilyn Warren AC, Open Justice in the Technological Age, Speech delivered at the 2013 Redmond Barry Lecture, Melbourne, Victoria, 21 October 2013.
(27)       https://twitter.com/UKSupremeCourt
(28)       Kevin McSpadden, You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish, TIME (14 May 2015).
(29)       Stefanus Hendrianto, The Puzzle of Judicial Communication in Indonesia: The Media, the Court, and the Chief Justice in Justices and Journalists (Richard Davis, David Taras), Cambridge University Press, 2017.
(30)       BBC, The Highest Court in the Land: Justice Makers (2011).
(31)       Stefanus Hendrianto, The Puzzle of Judicial Communication in Indonesia: The Media, the Court, and the Chief Justice in Justices and Journalists (Richard Davis, David Taras), Cambridge University Press, 2017; Constitutional Court Decision No.79/PUU-IX/2011, reviewing Law No.30 of 2008 on State Ministry.
(32)       Right Honourable Richard Wagner PC, Opening statement at the Chief Justice of Canada’s annual press conference, 18 June 2020.
(33)       Rachel Spencer, Communication beyond the Judgments: The Australian High Court, Speaking for Itself, but not Tweeting in Justices and Journalists (Richard Davis, David Taras), Cambridge University Press, 2017.
(34)       Ahran Park and Kyu Ho Youm, Judicial Communication in South Korea: Moving toward a More Open System? in Justices and Journalists (Richard Davis, David Taras), Cambridge University Press, 2017.
(35)       Statista Research Department, Number of social network users in Singapore from 2017 to 2021 and a forecast up to 2028, 19 January 2023.
(36)       Edson C. Tandoc Jr, Singapore Digital News Report, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 15 June 2022.
(37)       Ministry of Manpower, Foreign workforce numbers, retrieved on 2 February 2023.
(38)       Housing & Development Board, Public Housing – A Singapore Icon, retrieved on 2 February 2023.
(39)       Singapore Courts, the Judiciary, Effective Engagement of Litigants-in-Person, retrieved on 2 February 2023.
(40)       See Gary Chan Kok Yew, Access to Justice for the Poor: The Singapore Judiciary at Work, (2008) 17:3 Pac Rim L & Pol’y J. 595.
(41)       Renald Yeo, Bankruptcy applications hit 17-year high in 2022, after tapering of Covid-era support, The Business Times, 4 February 2023.
(42)       Helena Whalen-Bridge, Unrepresented litigants in Singapore: A prolegomenon to court typologies, Onati Socio-Legal Series, Volume 11, Issue 2 (2021), 480–502.
(43)       The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, The role of the judiciary in a changing world, Supreme Court of India Day Lecture Series, 1st Annual Lecture, 4 February 2023.
(44)       Tan Seng Kee v Attorney-General and other appeals [2022] 1 SLR 1347 at [2].
(45)       Public Prosecutor v Lam Leng Hung and others [2018] 1 SLR 659 at [1].
(46)       Richard L Fruin, “Judicial Outreach in the Twenty-First Century: The Reasons Why” (2009) 48(2) Judges’ Journal 27; Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen and Albert Klijn, “The Effects of Judicial Transparency on Public Trust: Evidence from a Field Experiment” (2015) 93(4) Public Administration 995.
(47)       The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, After the Fall of Babel: The Courts in a Post-Truth World, Supreme and Federal Courts’ Judges Conference 2023.
(48)       See Justice Philip Jeyaretnam, Keynote Address delivered at the Appropriate Dispute Resolution – The Singapore Way launch event, 12 January 2023.}