Much about the law and legal reform has been written from the standpoint of senior advocates and judges of the higher courts; people who have had a ring-side view of landmark cases – cases that have shaped our nation, laid down important legal doctrine and become part of our constitutional folklore.
But the evolution of law and the process of justice begins elsewhere. Away from the hallowed corridors of the constitutional courts, it begins in dusty, dimly lit rooms with rickety fans somewhere in a remote district, in the court of a magistrate or a civil judge.
In contrast to a constitutional court, where the litigants are often relegated to a distant viewing gallery that attracts only on occasional glance, here, in the magistrate’s court the litigant is front, right and centre. And so are the trial lawyers and judges.
And yet, these litigants and trial court judges and lawyers who inhabit these stories – the everyday foot soldiers of justice – have largely been absent from conversations about the judiciary and judicial reform. Their voices have remained unheard and their contributions unacknowledged and their problems unseen.
The struggles of trial court judges and lawyers
Prashant Reddy T and Chitrakshi Jain’s Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts is a step towards changing this. It is a must-read for any citizen interested in how the justice system works (or doesn’t) and for anyone invested in the rule of law and the quest to ensure that justice in India is not indefinitely trapped in the queue of pending dates.
It shines a much-needed light on the lives and struggles of trial court judges and lawyers. It brings them to the centre of the conversation and talks about challenges that plague our trial judiciary, which carries the bulk of our judicial burden.
Instead of taking the easy way out and writing off many trial court judgments as too conservative, the authors examine in great detail why that is the case. What they find is revealing. The legal and constitutional system – as it stands today – does not give trial court judges the independence they need to be able to perform their functions fearlessly.
The authors take the reader through stories of Kafkaesque enquiries and arbitrary dismissals of judges. In doing so, they make a compelling case for why protections for judges must be amped up on the same lines as those available to judges in High Courts and the Supreme Court.
The authors also delve into the rather vexing issue of the evaluation criteria for judges. They examine how the system often sets the wrong incentives, due to which justice sometimes simply becomes a numbers game rather than an exercise in judicial sensitivity.
I hope this part of the book results in a more nuanced conversation on assessing judicial performance and leads to a reimagination of the current system of evaluation, which is tilted heavily in favour of a quantitative analysis rather than a qualitative one.
In addition, the evaluation structure does not measure softer (and extremely important) judgeship skills and qualities such as compassion, patience, and humanity. The book raises important questions about whether these can be measured at all – and if so, how.
The pernicious problem of judges being transferred repeatedly, setting the clock back on cases, is also considered. The authors debunk the conventional wisdom that the repeated rotation of judges is good for the system. Their analysis here is insightful and their recommendations, easy to implement.
The authors also spend a fair deal of time on the great debate over the number of judges the country needs. Here again, they question established assumptions. We learn that the current strength of judges, efficiently deployed on a national scale, could yield much better outcomes.
The authors have a bone to pick with the inefficient use of funds allocated to the judiciary over the last few years and how this has not yielded the benefits the money could and should have.
These are important questions for the trial judiciary – and, by extension, for everyone who has got anything to do with the rule of law. Which is all of us.
The book also notes the apathetic absence of clear and accurate judicial statistics over the last few decades. Despite the massive investment of time, money, and manpower in collecting and presenting data, much of it remains deeply flawed.
The authors unearth shocking realities such as multiple counting of cases that has the effect of inflating judicial pendency and disposal statistics. This distorts a correct assessment and diagnosis of the real health of the judicial system.
Restoring the system to health
But the authors don’t just ask questions. They also have long-term prescriptions that may restore the health of our ailing judicial system. For instance, they question the established and cliched thinking that the jury system is bad and simply unworkable in a country like ours.
I do not necessarily agree with this. I believe the country is too vast, too diverse, and too lawless to be embracing this for now. But I do agree that this is a prescription for the good – in the longer run. One must commend the incisive examination of an issue that’s usually considered to be conventional wisdom and beyond question.
The past few decades have seen the creeping dilution of established procedural law and safeguards, which has, unfortunately, made the justice delivery system extremely subjective and unpredictable. It has also moved the system away from a principle-centric system to an individual(judge)-centric system.
The authors here marshall important arguments for adherence to, and in defence of, procedural law. This is refreshing. Procedural law is crucial and is often the only thing that ensures that even bad actors in the system are compelled to produce good results, by the sheer force of procedure and the transparency, accountability and objectivity it brings to the justice delivery process.
Sometimes, all that separates a criminal justice from a criminal justice system, is justice, which is a consequence of faithful application of procedural safeguards.
The authors have struck a fine balance between scholarly analysis and clear, jargon-free and interesting prose and backed up their conclusions with solid data and evidence.
Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts should compel us to think and empower the trial court justice system. It reminds us that, if appellate courts are the ivory towers of legal reasoning, trial courts are the real trenches – messy, human, immediate, and extremely important. They are where law ceases to be abstract and becomes life-altering, hopefully for the better.
Bharat Chugh is a lawyer.
Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts, Prashant Reddy T, Chitrakshi Jain, Simon and Schuster India.
