"The author is an eminent lawyer and human rights activist
"JUDICIARY IS FOR JUSTICE,NOT JUST CASES
Recently, I read a short book by Leila Seth (the first woman of Delhi high court and the first woman chief justice of a high court in India). We, The Children of India – The Preamble to our Constitution by Seth explains the ideals of our Constitution in a simple and lucid manner, namely, dignity, equality, opportunity, freedom, liberty, rights, justice, fraternity, democracy, socialism and secularism.
At the same time, I came to read a report by the Centre for Social Justice regarding lack of awareness in our lower judiciary about socio-economic rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
There is nothing surprising or shocking in the report. A few years back, the while attending the classes of Judicial Academy, lower court judges raised a question, “How are we concerned with the human rights of our Constitution."
I was asked by the chairman to prepare a short note to show how Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles are also important in the work of the lower judiciary. In almost every case, one or the other right is directly or indirectly involved, as in the case of tortured wife, child labour, right to education, custodial violence, bail and remands, family disputes, dispossession of land, termination of worker’s services, landless labourer’s claim for minimum wages, granting injunctions, water disputes, money lending etc..
This ignorance or indifference or insensitivity has not only been prevalent in the lower judiciary, but has also spread to the higher judiciary. When we talk about human rights in a lower court, we are ridiculed and told “not here, but in the high court”. When we do the same thing in the high court, we are told in many cases the same thing, “not here, go to the Supreme Court”.
Our Constitutional ideals have largely become a dead letter for a large number of our judges and black letter lawyers for whom law is a logical exercise or linguistic gymnasium. Every legal concept has not only a core meaning, but also a penumbral area where your sense of justice and ideals of Constitution have same role to play.
But for these judges, deciding the cases is the job, not doing justice. For many lawyers and judges, law is a game of chess – you move and I counter-move. But every case is a human drama where human beings are the actors.
A workman retrenched or dismissed, a woman burnt, exploited child labourer, a displaced tribal, tortured dalit are not simple law cases but living, suffering human beings seeking justice from the courts.
For doing justice, legal scholarship or disposal efficiency is not important but Soloman’s wisdom is required. There can be no better guideline than our Preamble for doing justice.
In this unfortunate state of affairs, I think Leila Seth’s short book should be made available to all judges as the basic textbook to guide them towards administering justice.
Strangely, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which was meant for the adults came to be used as a children’s book. Here, Leila Seth’s book, written for children, should be studied and digested by our Hon’ble judges. Every day, the court work must begin and end with the recitation of our Preamble so as to remind the judges and the lawyers that truth and justice are the two pillars of administration of justice."
