Comment of the fortnight: Everyone loves a sensible suggestion to shake things up in the Supreme Court case-pendency tables

LI-Mint in-depth: The Supreme Court’s battle against the backlog - a losing proposition, or out of ideas?

Nishant - 10 June 2012 at 14:47

There should be a distinction between the SC Judges who sit for admission of SLP and appeal matters and those who sit to hear arguments and pronounce judgments.

A number of judges are very good at quick disposal of cases, but very poor at constructive writing of judgments which would lay down the law and not merely resolve the dispute at hand.

The reverse is also true.

So there could be a Supreme Court (Admissions, Interim Orders & ADR Side) and Supreme Court (Adjudication Side.)

Also one could think of imposing monetary costs on AoR's who file cases where alternative remedies are possible or otherwise other restrictions which have been read into Art. 136 or the case appears frivolous.

One often comes across cases which read like this:
Dispute over property arises in 1990. TC dismisses the suit in 1999. First appeal to District Court, dismissed in 2003. Second appeal to HC, dismissed in 2010 as containing "no substantial question of law". Hence an SLP in 2011.

Such cases merely clog up the system as being chance/luxury litigation and play havoc with the lives of litigants and are often due to the lack of honest advice by lawyers.

2. Years of legal education can hone fine minds into sophisticated tools that, like a key-chain laser, cut through the complex morass of law school politics, to identify only the most salient issues. Bravo, LI salutes you!

NUJS loses London PhD to NLU-J after bureaucracy dispute post MP Singh

Climax – 21 June 2012 at 17:42

So what happens in the end, Does Ms Rukmini Das actually returns the Laptop?

3. Time we borrowed the IIT-JEE conduct-methods, and polished CLAT?

Flawed answer key adds to CLATalogue of disasters, candidates join RTI campaign

BOSS NLU – 12 June 2012 at 17:44

IIT-JEE has set standards of showing every candidate's OMR, where the no. of candidates appearing are manifold and media attention for pointing out mistakes is highest.

Yet, such scrutiny could find no fault in it, even when the entire process was done in a reasonable time.

There is no reason why NLUs shouldn't imitate, if not innovate.

If required, they can hire the services of the IIT-JEE teams and rework the merit to do justice with one and all. Anything else will be something less.

The leading law schools need to do justice with the aspiring lawyers.

And the entire process of reworking of merit list, allocation of institutions to the satisfaction of one and all should not take more than 10 days.

 

Honourable mention: Flattery will get you nowhere, except maybe into comments of the fortnight.

NUJS loses London PhD to NLU-J after bureaucracy dispute post MP Singh

BULL — 20 June 2012 at 10:27

Regardless of whether he wanted 15 minutes, he has done many teachers and aspiring teachers [a favour] by exposing NUJS.

Issues like these should reach the media, and it often takes guts to inform the world about [atrocities] because some people view it as a claim-to-(15 mins of) fame.

The story also shows the power of media. Legally India is what it is because it is willing to cover every aspect of law, including things happening in lawschools.

If associate moves can make stories, this one qualifies too. And we love reading this stuff as well.

LI note: For the record, Dr Ranjan was actually against our publishing that article or letter.