Always revitalising and evolving |
About the project The Singapore Academy of Law’s Law Reform Committee considered whether the rule against hearsay in the law of evidence required reform. Generally speaking, the rule provides that a statement claiming that a certain fact exists is not admissible for proving the existence of the fact. However, the rule has long been criticized as the line between hearsay and non-hearsay evidence has always been difficult to determine with precision. There are numerous common law exceptions to the rule, but these are regarded as difficult to apply in practice. In Singapore, the hearsay rule and exceptions to it are placed on a statutory footing in the Evidence Act. The Committee noted that while this had avoided many of the criticisms levelled at common law exceptions to the rule, the statutory exceptions left many questions unanswered. The Committee recommended abolition of the hearsay rule while introducing proper safeguards to ensure that there is a basic level of fairness to the parties to legal proceedings. Project status: Completed
|
Areas of law Click on the image above to view the report |