Of Absences, Masks and Exceptions: Cause Lawyering in Singapore

Abstract

In this article, we explore the barriers to cause lawyering in Singapore. Our paper suggests that Singapore is a peculiar lawyering space in that lawyers who advocate for causes, especially causes understood to have moral, civil and political dimensions, do so in the context of a specific social memory: that of lawyers who have (in effect) been punished for challenging the state. Our argument is that, as a result of this punitive state response, lawyers who seek to further causes in today’s Singapore tend to operate in very specific ways, that we refer to as masked cause lawyering.

Our paper traces a genealogy of cause lawyering in Singapore in an effort to explain the general rule of cause lawyering as either masked or absent. We also focus on the period from 2000 to the present, and chronicle the legal career of the exception highlighted by our title: M. Ravi. In our conclusion, we seek to provide an overview of cause lawyering in Singapore from a historical and contemporary standpoint and offer some speculative thoughts on the future of cause lawyering in Singapore.

Keywords: Cause lawyering, Public interest lawyering, Singapore, Legal Profession, Human rights