Sunday, 7 July 2013

Delayed Justice and ossified rules leading to rigidity

The justice delivery system rests on the confidence, trust and goodwill it enjoys among the people.
  A system without the natural voluntary  acceptance of the public cannot grow or survive.
 On the contrary , if it has the basic acceptability it helps the executive, legislature and the public and it keeps on growing even under pressure or attack.
The range of justice delivery system or you can call it the law-working- system or the legal system is so vast in extent,variety, mass, volume and some time its penetrability  that its presence is felt in all walks of life from top to bottom. 

But this vastness and utility generates expectations also which at times may be disproportionate.

 At times there are management threats ,urgencies . There may be occasion for managerial or administrative breakdowns.

Even some type of transitory or temporary failure of system - specific, general, man-made or infrastructural may also be there.

Such failures in the teeth of really high social or organisational  expectations may create institutional wrecks, upheaval or social or political unrest.

Then there is a velocity factor. demand -supply of justice and its timely dispensation to the rightful person and its consequences.

The way Justice has to be dispensed is another area to be addressed. Justice as per law, as per rule , precedent and justice in the areas where the discretion of the judge may be the ruling factor pose new and sometimes unforeseen risks.

On the one hand this discretion is required. Imagination of Judge is an area where fair play plays determinative role. Without this space perhaps the system gets blocked.  But this discretion may lead to arbitrariness or subjectivity.

Laying down rules is an instrument to play down this risk. The areas where the discretion  of the judge has to play a bigger role has been  identified. These areas have been narrowed down  and regulated. Imaginative space has been left to allow the system work  as per local variation or expectation.This has been  done to meet peculiar  challenges in certain specific local contexts or emergency.

In fact the rules, with the passage of time gets ossified  leading to rigidity and obstructing flexibility and that may sometime  pose momentary blockade of flow of justice in a particular circumstance.

This blockade may  obstruct the over all speed of justice delivery system and the justice gets delayed. This ossified rigidity in sometimes overlooked and is not always perceivable even to the system managers or administrator but this is pinchingly felt by the stake holders or by the justice seekers.

 

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