High Court of Sabah

 and Sarawak.

When Captain James Brooke became the Raja of Sarawak in 1842,and the British North Borneo Company  obtained concessions to vast tracks of land in North Borneo in 1865, these two historical incidents slowly paved the way for the development of a legal system in the two territories with the English principles of justice and with modifications according to local conditions and customs.

Both North Borneo and Sarawak had no proper legally qualified Judges in the initial periods from early 1800s to late 1928.They were merely administrators who sat as judges or magistrates. The highest court in each territory then was the Supreme Court. North Borneo had their first legally qualified Judicial Commissioner in 1912, and in 1929 the post was called "Chief Justice".

Sarawak had its first legally qualified Judge in 1928 in the person of Mr. Justice T. S. Stirling -Boyd when he was appointed as a Judicial Commissioner until his retirement in 1939.It was then that  a proper legal system based on legal principles was established .

After the Second World War, North Borneo became a Crown Colony. Sarawak was ceded  to Great Britain in 1946.In 1951, North Borneo joined Sarawak and Brunei to form a Combined Judiciary for the three territories, consisting of a Court of Appeal and a High Court. The first Chief Justice of the Combined Judiciary then was Sir Ivor Brace. This system continued until 1963  when North Borneo was renamed Sabah and joined Sarawak to merge with Malaya and Singapore to form the Federation of Malaysia.

Under the Federal Constitution, the courts in  Malaya and Sabah and Sarawak ( collectively called "Borneo" States) shall have  one High Court each and to be called the High Court of Malaya ,and the High Court of Borneo.Each is to be headed by the Chief Justice .Hence in 1963 ,the High Court in Borneo was headed by the Chief Justice of Borneo based in Kuching. The titles " High Court in Borneo" and "Chief Justice " were used until 1994 when they were changed to "High Court of Sabah and Sarawak" and "Chief Judge" respectively.