The Development of Singapore’s Military Justice System

Abstract

The global trend towards civilianization of military justice systems has had its own unique impact on Singapore’s brand of military justice, in particular its mode of trial by General Court-Martial. This paper explores the development of Singapore’s military justice system since Singapore’s independence, comparing it to developments in the United Kingdom and Canada, two countries that have also civilianized their military justice systems with input from their civil courts, and in the case of the uk, the European Court of Human Rights. These jurisdictions provide a useful comparison on the progress of Singapore’s civilianization reform given both their shared origin of military justice in the English court-martial system and the focus of all three jurisdictions on better protecting the rights of accused servicemen.