India has no quality law journal (A Legal Reporter’s Diary)

NEW DELHI - How come there is no quality Indian law journal like the Harvard Law Review? The reason lies in lawyers being too self-centric and contributing little towards the development of law, or so believes Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia.

He first aired his displeasure with the ways of senior counsel while he was chief justice-designate. He took exception to senior lawyers skipping the proceedings of an important conference devoted to judicial reforms.

In yet another just-concluded conference on the country’s legal system, the CJI said everybody loves to refer to the Harvard Law Review or the European Constitutional Law Review but one never gets to see any such thing in India.

He said that senior lawyers appear in the court on Monday and Friday and then they are not to be seen. He wondered if they did not feel obliged to contribute to the growth of law in the country by promoting quality law journals.

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Indians always ‘manage’ things

The Supreme Court had an interesting piece of advice for a former advocate general of Sikkim whose plea to get his office de-sealed was rejected - manage things instead of taking legal recourse.

Justice Markandey Katju said in this country things are “managed” and that was a better route to address one’s problems. “We have a culture of managing the situation,” he pointed out.

The former advocate general had moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the state government to help him reclaim his office in Gangtok. The court said he should know that such a relief was not available to him as the land on which his office was located had been acquired by the government.

Justice T.S. Thakur said the court had no jurisdiction to tell the state government to de-notify the land it had already acquired.

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How many trees make a forest

The number of trees that constitute a forest varies from state to state. But in one particular case being heard by the Supreme Court, a judge was left counting the trees in his backyard!

The apex court’s forest bench comprising Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice Aftab Alam and Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan was hearing the cause of a park in Noida which is being developed by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati to dedicate it to the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party’s Dalit icons.

In Uttar Pradesh, the presence of 50 trees on an area of two hectares is good enough for the land to qualify as a forest.

A senior counsel who appeared for the state said going by this definition of the forest one could hardly go for any construction activity in half of Delhi as it was covered by a high density of trees.

Senior counsel Jayant Bhushan, who is opposing the park on behalf of Noida residents, countered this by saying there was no place in Delhi that had 50 trees in two hectares.

But Justice Alam corrected and overruled the senior lawyer saying in his own official bungalow there were 75 trees!

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Cleaning legal dirt

The Supreme Court under the stewardship of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia appears set to make lawyers accountable for their actions.

The other day he took a serious view of a counsel, appearing for an online trading company, holding back certain critical facts about the case from the court. Obviously these facts did not favour the litigant company.

The chief justice said they - litigants and lawyers - should not be allowed to take the court for a ride. He said: “I had doubts at the outset; thus, I raised the query. This is very serious and shows the practices of the lawyers”.

The lawyer, being the officer of the court, was duty bound to bring all the facts on record. The court said the time has come for it to take note of lawyers compromising on professional integrity.

In yet another case, the court of Justice G.S. Singhvi hauled up a lawyer for holding back some facts.

(Parmod Kumar can be contacted at mazak1453@gmail.com)