This chapter considers the origin and evolution of English administrative law principles in Singapore. It discusses the reasons behind the initial adoption – almost wholesale – of English administrative law on Singapore’s independence. The chapter analyses how English administrative law principles of judicial review were used to maintain a predominantly “green light” approach to judicial review until very recently. However, since 2013, the courts have adopted a stronger and more involved approach to reviewing executive decision-making. This includes, expanding judicial review to areas of executive decision-making that were previously non-justiciable (for example, the exercise of clemency powers and decisions involving national security interests); incrementally removing restrictions on standing; questioning the validity of ouster clauses; and expanding the scope of substantive review. While these developments mirror those in the English context, the chapter looks at the reasoning and principles utilised by the Singapore courts to make these changes to their jurisdiction. It highlights how the courts have moved away from the use of English law or, indeed, other common law jurisdictions for inspiration. Instead, there is a strong emphasis on building autochthonous local lines of precedent that better reflect the constitutional and political environment of Singapore. An analysis of the courts’ reasoning shows how the recent assertion of a stronger role by the courts is not based on a distrust of public power (as is the case in other common law jurisdictions). Rather, the courts have stepped up the scope of their review because of a perceived need on the part of the courts to contribute, as a ‘co-equal’ participant, its’ unique institutional perspective on matters of governance and accountability. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the localised contours of the separation of powers doctrine that are likely to drive the future development of judicial review principles in Singapore.

A third set of approaches to deference disclose a concurrent view of authority. In the modes of ‘restraint’, ‘reference’, and ‘respect’, authority provides non-exclusionary second-order reasons for action. Second-order reasons for recognising domestic decision-making authority are treated akin to a request, rather than an order. Second-order reasons for reaching a particular decision are balanced alongside first-order reasons, rather than displacing them. Adopting this view of authority, the adjudicator is able to assert its own decision-making authority, whilst also acknowledging the decision making authority of other actors. This Chapter examines three modes of deference that reflect this understanding of the interface between domestic and international decision-making authority: the modes of deference as restraint, deference as reference, and deference as respect. Each of these approaches to deference differs from those considered in Chapters 5 and 6, because in each the adjudicator engages (even if only in a limited way) with the available first-order reasons for decision despite having recognised second-order reasons to defer to a domestic actor’s decision-making authority.