More or Better ?

Now here the deal , the cabinet gives a green signal as the expansion of the sup court bench now by five more seats so now or soon the tally is 31 my lords in fourteen(or fifteen) courts .
On the face of it the decision seems to be logical ...you are now a billion in India plus the pressure etc etc but sirs what happens to the coherence of the law laid down in cases involving bunch matters or new areas of the law ??...

only recently a Three judge bench was hearing a matter relating to the question of whether the 2002 SECURITISATION ACT actually does away with the prior statutory charge of the State dues over and above the secured creditors ? in other words are secured creditors secure enough when the mighty State marches with its claim of primacy .Now another bench was dealing with another case involving the same question but to my mind did they know of the 3 judge hearing ? i doubt not ..Such situations are likely more frequent ..where what my lord justice 'x' says isn't known by my lord 'y' , it means more procedural bottlenecks and bad days of lawyer trying to bring more applications before bench just to clarify the stage of the case before them.

besides this we have the Somnath Chatterjee widely reported argument - more judges no solution since more cases will be admitted and the ratio of admitted cases vis-a-vis pending will worsen or be the same , has great merit ..the question to be asked do we want
more judgments or better judgments ?
and related to it
more judges or better judges ?
A decision to increase judges has a clever presumption ,that merit quotient present in judge pool is good enough to justify the increase of number at the (totally unsupported by any data) .

All debate regarding the increase , has to be viewed in the light of the narrow window of jurisdiction that the Art 136 of the Constitution of India allows .What the framers to the constitution had in mind is not a final adjudication not through regular appeal but by special appeal .Supreme Court of India is actually 'Special' Court of India .The expression 'Supreme' is slightly misleading in that it is suggestive of the highest court of appeal (i.e conferred with Appellate Jurisdiction) what it is is a court of special jurisdiction a~la a lord hearing a writ i.e discretionary in character (a fact that junior lawyers at this court know only too well :( ) .A particular case becomes a regular appeal only when my lords thinks it so .This is also borne out by Art.142 which is a wide power given to the Sup Court to decide in the favor of "complete justice" .Wide powers are to exercised in limited contexts .
There are two reasons ,in my limited experience which cause a case to be admitted one the blunder of a lazy judge (therefore rightly admitted) and second a case where my lord of the sup court fails to see its unfitness .
therefore the filter is discretion and the probability is the arrears are reduced not by more but by better judges ...


aks

Lawyers in Pakistan -knights of democracy- reasons

What many don't realize is that the battle in Pakistan has always been between constitutionalism and Feudal insticts domination....for want of a better expression .And in this battle the latest resistance of the Pakistani legal community is one that needs global support .the reasons are many one of them is that the guiding force or grund norm is a body of principals developed and shaped by haloed common law traditions .The best features of this norm are the values of democracy , modernity plurism and reason .
Imagine a community which doesn't have direct cash stake in a struggle against a overbearing state ...yet is actively and effectivly involved in it and the current resistance fits this requirment .
the reinstatment of the chief justice and the insecurity of the Musharaff in having prominent figures like Pakistan Bar Council vice-chairman Ali Ahmed ,former judge Tariq Mahmood and Supreme Court Bar Association chief Aitzaz Ahsan detained after delceration of emergency in Pakistan (they were are released on the eve of polling in pakistan )
.the legal fraternity of Pakistan who are the only people with any integrity in the political / public space in Pakistan .

pls write to the Pakistan Supreme Court bar council at Info@pbc.gov.pk in case you want to express your support ..
three cheers to lawyers ..o come on they are not all that bad ...

Developer suggestion to Law Drafters - adapt to beta code

This contribution by a guy with an apparently techie background on the slashdot.org is an excellent take on the law drafting process prevalent in the common law world .. the significant input in this article is that we follow an extremely litigation prone and unscientific process of creating law .
The question to be answered is ---do we test a statute on real or simulated situations before we slap on people ?
In India i have been privy to some information which indicates that the lawyers often follow a secret code of keeping a law ambiguous by making certain provisions vague !!
..the result is more money for lawyers ..Interpretation Process suffers from a casuality ..the hapless litigants ..
because following the hallowed principle of making a statute work( read francis bennnion ) they apply the roman and common law principles to rescue a statute from being unworkable or unjust ..but we need a few decisions of live cases before ambiguities are removed ..so why not Install another layer of testing by jurists /lawyers/ex judges before the law goes live !! the beta version .
cheers
aks

The Unknown Lawyer

The Unknown Lawyer

The Unknown Lawyer

The Unknown Lawyer: "Name: Lawzeus "