ABSTRACT
For over a century, two parallel legal orders have operated in Brunei Darussalam, with each employing distinctive bodies of law in separate systems of courts, one religious and one secular. The secular system imposed under years of British colonial rule embodies very different principles and procedures from those of the religious system, yet jointly they provide the official and formally sanctioned means of dispute resolution. Neither legal order is indigenous to Brunei. Both were received from foreign lands and cultures. The means of reception was different in each case, but both were premised on liberating the people from the perceived deficits in the existing social ordering. Islamic law was to enlighten the animistic tribal people of Borneo with knowledge of the ways brought by Allah to his Prophet in Arabia, while secular Western law was introduced to civilize and modernize the stagnating practices of people perceived as backward.1 Distain for Brunei methods of dispute resolution and governance is well set-out in the early documents and writings of Colonial Office officials in Brunei: Peter Leys, British Consul General, in 1885 wrote that the existing system in Brunei ‘should be replaced by the clearer and stronger rule of the more enlightened European in whose justice and integrity they have perfect confidence’.2
