Kuala Lampur, Nov. 26 -- In 2008, in the House of Lords - the apex court as it was then known for the whole of the United Kingdom in civil cases - Lord Hoffmann had the occasion to make the following opening remarks in his judgment:

"If a legal rule requires a fact to be proved (a "fact in issue"), a judge . must decide whether or not it happened. There is no room for a finding that it might have happened. The law operates a binary system in which the only values are 0 and 1. The fact either happened or it did not.

"If the [court] is left in doubt, the doubt is resolved by a rule that one party or the other carries the burden of proof.

"If the party who bears the burden of proof fails to discharge it, a value of 0 is returned and the f...