Read The Judge Than The Law

Started to restart, only to know that earlier was definitely easy. They asked and I said, re-inventing the wheel. Anyway, can you tell one common thing between Love and Law? The common denominator is that both are simple things. Love cannot be complex and complex laws are never followed. Law must be simple and for the benefit of people. A law which doesn’t benefit people is no law. Our courts must also be cautious of this. Some senior lawyer told me that in Indian courts it’s an era of ‘NO’. Here comes the concept of relief. Lawyers are less concerned with the law and for litigants it’s more a burden. It’s the ‘relief’ with which the lawyer and litigants are more concerned. “Relief”, ironically such an important term of the court room practice specially in Indian ligation and judicial system, never found mention in the law schools. And there is a justification of this too. Schools teach you law not the cracks of law. Court room makes you learn you about those holes of law from which you can take out relief for a client even though there is nothing in law for him. There comes the ‘Behavioral School of Jurisprudence’. Read the judge than the law. If you know how and when a judge thinks what then you are through. You can steal the relief. This legal realism becomes all the more important in a country like ours where law and its system works on ‘court to court basis’. I don’t know whether it’s time for this system to change but surely some amends are necessary. Judge made law finds its origin most of the time in a pattern of the behavior of the judge and the huge discretion vested in the courts in our constitutional scheme. Discretionary remedies were provided in the jurisdiction of constitutional courts of this country. Its’ right that Judges make law in this system. I wish framers of our constitution might have provided some caveats for such a vast discretion. Vesting of such vast discretion in the higher courts was a legacy of the common law system and royal courts. Royalty blood has gone so are the royal courts and now ‘My Lord’ must also go. So is true with the discretion. Such a vast discretion seems unhealthy for the modern day democracy. In present day court room system of adjudication and practice there is no scope of debates and discussion. Indian courts are invariably in such a hurry whether due to media hype of large amount of ‘pendency’ of cases or otherwise that they never leave any such scope of scholarly debates in the court. Fortunate are the lawyers who are at least heard otherwise ‘MyLord’ knows everything and surely they exercise the authority of discretion and some time of law also.