Reginald Hugh Hickling, CMG, QC (2 August 1920 – 11 February 2007), known as Hugh Hickling, was a British lawyer, civil servant, law academic, and author, and author of the controversial Internal Security Act of colonial Malaysia.

Born in Derby, England, Hickling served from 1941 until 1946 in the British Royal Navy during World War II, and then joined the Colonial Legal Service. In 1955, Hickling was posted to Malaya (now Malaysia), where he gained prominence as a lawmaker. He drafted the Constitution of Malaysia, and as Commissioner of Law Revision wrote the Internal Security Act (ISA) of 1960, which provided for the detention of persons without trial. The ISA was later used to suppress political opponents or those dedicated to non-violent activities, which Hickling later said was not his intention.

In 1972, Hickling retired from the civil service, and subsequently lectured in law in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Hickling later wrote many books and law journal articles, and also wrote novels and short stories throughout his career. Hickling died in 2007 in Malvern, Worcestershire.

Hickling was the son of Frederick Hickling, a police inspector, and his wife Elsie, of Malvern, Worcestershire. Hickling was born on 2 August 1920 in Derby, and educated at Buxton College. He applied to study at the University of Oxford, but was unsuccessful at his interview, because he shocked his examiner by rating the poetry of A. E. Housman over that of William Wordsworth. He studied instead at the University of Nottingham, where he became the youngest student to graduate with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). After graduation, Hickling joined a law firm as an articled clerk, and then enrolled for one year of approved academic study at the East Midlands School of Law.

Between 1941 and 1946 Hickling served as an ordinary seaman in World War II with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on board HMS La Malouine, a 29-metre French corvette taken over by the British. The ship was part of Convoy PQ 17, carrying matériel from Britain and the US to the USSR. PQ 17 sailed in June–July 1942 and suffered the heaviest losses of any Russia-bound convoy, with 25 vessels out of 36 lost to enemy action. On D-Day, he was a Sub-Lieutenant commanding an Mk IV Landing Craft Tank 1013 with LCT 1018 of the 43rd LCT flotilla, which carried several hundred tons of ammunition to Sword Beach, Normandy.

Hickling married Beryl (Bee) Dennett in 1945, and the following year he resumed his legal career as deputy solicitor with the Evening Standard in London. After the death of their firstborn son, they emigrated despite his wife's uncertainty about moving as far from England as possible.

Hickling joined the Colonial Legal Service, and in 1950 was posted to Sarawak, then a British colony, as assistant attorney general and, as he put it, "cheerfully assisted in the dissolution of Empire". In 1954, he spent two months in the sultanate of Brunei to research its constitutional status and to brief colonial officials on its history and traditions before the introduction of a written constitution, and submitted his memorandum on the matter in 1955.

Immediately thereafter, Hickling was transferred to Malaya as its first parliamentary draftsman, and in that capacity he helped to prepare the Malayan (now Malaysian) constitution for that country's independence from Britain in 1957. Subsequently, as Commissioner of Law Revision he drafted the Internal Security Act of 1960, based on the Emergency Ordinance 1948 which had been enacted to provide the British colonial authorities with powers to tackle a communist insurgency. For his contributions to Malaya, Hickling was made a Companion of the Order of the Defender of the Realm (known in Malay as the Johan Mangku Negara or JMN) by the Malayan head of state, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, in 1961.