page_title: Threshold issues in Singapore administrative law
section_title: Position in Singapore
hierarchical_section_title: Threshold issues in Singapore administrative law / Amenability / Decisions with a public element / Position in Singapore
caption_attribution_description: Recce trip to look for buildings for night or blue hour shooting. There is something interesting to the far left of this building (not in the pic) Samsung WB250F
context_page_description: Threshold issues are legal requirements in Singapore administrative law that must be satisfied by applicants before their claims for judicial review of acts or decisions of public authorities can be dealt with by the High Court. These include showing that they have standing to bring cases, and that the matters are amenable to judicial review and justiciable by the Court.
  Depending on the interest that the applicant seeks to represent, standing can be categorized as either private or public standing. Applicants must establish they have private standing if they seek to represent personal interests. In contrast, an applicant who seeks to represent the interests of a larger group or the public at large must establish he or she has public or representative standing.
context_section_description: Similar to the United Kingdom's position, judicial review in Singapore is confined to matters of public law, and the applicable tests are the source test and nature test. The Datafin decision was applied by the Singapore Court of Appeal in Public Service Commission v. Lai Swee Lin Linda (2001), where the respondent, an employee with the Land Office, had the probationary period of her employment extended without prior warning. Her employment contract was later terminated. She complained to various statutory bodies, and ultimately to the Public Service Commission ("PSC"), but was unsuccessful in having her employment reinstated. She then sought leave from the High Court to apply for judicial review against the PSC. In the course of its judgment, the Court of Appeal accepted that the source test is one of the tests that can be relied on to determine whether a decision by a body is amenable to judicial review. In addition, it noted that Datafin had held that the source test is not the only applicable test. However, the Court did not embark on a discussion of the nature test because it found that when the respondent's employer had made the decisions concerning her employment, it had acted pursuant to her contractual terms of service and had not exercised its statutory powers. Thus, the decisions were not susceptible to judicial review. It did not invariably follow that when a statutory body makes a decision it is exercising a statutory power.
  In UDL Marine (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. v. Jurong Town Corp. (2011), Lai Swee Lin Linda was acknowledged to be the leading authority in Singapore on determining the amenability to judicial review. The High Court said that both the source test and nature test applied in Singapore. In the case, the Jurong Town Corporation ("JTC") had leased land to UDL Marine and had declined to renew the lease after its term expired. UDL Marine challenged this decision. The Court held that even though the Jurong Town Corporation Act conferred on JTC the power to lease land, it did not prescribe the terms on which JTC could lease land and the considerations to be taken into account. JTC's exercise of power to lease land was a private act as it "was not something a private individual would not be capable of doing". The Court added that even though there was an element of public interest, JTC's decisions had not been "sufficiently of a public nature". In granting and renewing leases, it had been acting just like a private landlord.
  In the case of Yeap Wai Kong v. Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd. (2012), the High Court identified various factors to determine if the decision by Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd. ("SGX-ST") to reprimand a director of a company listed on the Singapore Exchange was properly characterized as a public function. These factors include the extent to which the SGX-ST is interwoven into the legislative and regulatory matrix, whether the reprimand function has a statutory underpinning, and the nature of the reprimand function. Even though the SGX-ST is not a statutory board, it is an approved exchange under section 16 of the Securities and Futures Act, which provides that it must take into account the interests of both the investing and general public when discharging its obligations. Also, SGX-ST is a vital part of the institutional ecosystem of Singapore's financial sector. Its function to publicly reprimand a listed company's director may potentially result in adverse implications on the company's business reputation and the director's continued service on board committees and directorships of other listed companies. For these reasons, the nature test was satisfied.
  The Court of Appeal clarified in Manjit Singh s/o Kirpal Singh v. Attorney-General (2013) that if the power exercised by a body has a legislative source, this will "ordinarily mean that it is amenable to judicial review in the absence of compelling reasons to the contrary". However, this is not an invariable rule, and there are situations in which a statutory power is not amenable to judicial review. Examples
caption: JTC Summit, the headquarters of JTC Corporation which was formerly known as the Jurong Town Corporation. A 2011 case of the High Court against the JTC held that both the source and nature tests apply in Singapore to determine if a body's decision is amenable to judicial review.
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