Quest for Justice via Modernization

A court is a governmental authority which adjudicates legal disputes between parties to carry out justice according to “Rule of Law”. It’s thus the central place for seeking justice in any Legal System. On the other hand justice is a concept of moral righteousness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, justice ,religion, fairness or equity along with the punishment of the breach of ethics.
However justice can only be called justice when its seen to be done meaning a court system should be transparent, efficient ,accessible, well managed and not delayed or expensive. Justice can only be seen to be done when modernization in the court structure is achieved. I believe there are strong implications of a modern court structure on justice. First ill discuss the prominent failures in our present court structure and a typical court room and then the possible modifications which should be introduced.
Justice can be achieved not only through interpretation of law or by introducing new laws to cope up with a new situation but what is even more important is the ” modernization“ of the whole court structure set up. In other words the simple solution should be why work hard to achieve justice when we can work smart through efficient means to achieve justice.
A legal system of every jurisdiction is its identity and it is our legal structure which is ignored the most. The most basic requirement of justice is that it should never be expensive at all costs as it’s a fundamental right of every citizen who follows the rule of law, else the name justice will tilt towards financially strong individuals of the society and this should be avoided at all costs. As a Pakistani citizen I see many lacks in our legal structure which urgently needs to be addressed. Huge revenue is generated by court fees and it all goes to government without being invested back in the courts. It should be noted that if we spend on our legal system it will be equivalent to spending on justice, for the next 100 years to come for the general public. Potential injustice to parties will be avoided and a lot of innocent lives might be saved especially in criminal proceeding once transparency is attained .This is how important change is needed in our court system because with every single day, delay in its modernization is costing a life. Secondly, the more faith citizens have towards the court system, the more stable and peaceful the society is because inequality is the root of every evil in the society. We are the people of the 21st century and even today in courts we observe 80% time wastage and 20% work and follow the same system which was followed 100 years back. Most of the authoritative bodies have been computerized for instance NADRA and visa issuing authorities. However the question remains than why haven’t the courts been computerized till now? Although it’s the most fundamental institution of our legal structure.
Other prominent failures of present court system are at times the fee exceeds the original claim amount for which the case was filed. A lot of times frivolous cases reach the courts which only waste time and justice is often delayed for ages. General public has largely lost confidence in the courts .Corruption in the court is at individual level. Even the Lower courts look no better than a fish market. Court reporting is done by individuals who aren’t qualified for such a job and the whole court proceeding is generally hand written and illegible. There is a probability that a judge might mention a different point and what is understood and written by the reporter might somewhat be different than what the judge actually have said or meant.
Therefore the answer to these problems is firstly, technology should be introduced in courts. Secondly, we need to make our court structure more efficient by eliminating costs in terms of time and money at all levels .Thirdly, by introducing new possible ways for making courts an excellent and most desirable forum for delivering justice and its relevant decisions to be unquestionable.
Courts need to be well managed to achieve justice and this can automatically be achieved once our court system is computerized and proper records of every file are kept. If courts are connected via internet to each city, there wouldn’t be any conflicting decisions. E-filing should also be introduced so that work is done more efficiently cheaply, faster and by convenience (example e- filing of Trade Marks). The transparency of court system should be seen therefore there should be a specific T.V channel to broadcast court proceedings live so that general public can view the proceedings and there would be thus more scrutiny of judges and unfair judgement will be avoided by the judge at all costs.
The concept of Virtual courtroom is not a new concept and yet legal systems continue to lack severely behind in adopting technology that would be more accessible, fair, cost effective and would save up huge amounts of cost a year, if introduced. Development of internet has created the opportunity for courts to publish decision on websites at a low cost and to be easily available to public. However minor and often ignored areas at times, when changed bring about revolution and therefore I believe changes at the initial courtroom should be the first step towards improvement. Therefore once court room is modernized, the whole court structure would improve subsequently. The possible alterations are very much achievable in our country and they are thought of keeping in mind our resources. Therefore the possible solutions to make a court room more efficient is, it should first have an LCD screen display outside each court with a qualified staff to manage the networking. Each LCD should show the details of the present proceedings and a scroller to show the list of next cases to be heard with proper numbering and timings of its hearing (time-date –case name) along with case announcements. Microphone and speaker should be available in each courtroom, especially the lower courts. In the higher courts microphone is often held at a distance from the judge and lawyers cannot hear and understand what the judge is speaking. Court rooms should also be identical, of same standard, size and should be well equipped.
As to the problem of “delayed justice” and frivolous cases reaching the courts and wasting its time, the best option is introduction of mandatory ADR prior to court proceedings. These frivolous cases would be eliminated at initial stage .Courts will have less burden for instance where 100 cases had to reach the court now only 50 will reach and these will be dealt with “efficiency” and “effectiveness”. Only a genuine case which is not settled by ADR, should have a 2nd chance of initiating court proceedings.
Another necessary step which can improve the overall management of cases is if lawyers are trained how to speak, present and manage a case with personal grooming by introducing a 6 months course along with the LLB degree. It would train them how to be efficient in case management and enhance their communication skills. This training should include court visits; law moots oral presentations and other activities which a lawyer faces once he starts practising. This is necessary because law qualification and practise is different and it would also help them to become more efficient as soon as they start their practise.
The most obvious failure of a typical Pakistani courtroom are related to court reporting or when files are misplaced and when they are read .It consumes a lot of time. The best solution to tackle such a problem is judges and lawyers should have laptops with scanned files so that there is no wastage of time in searching relevant files or going through pages one by one. Writing can often be ambiguous which can further waste time in interpreting and understanding it. This point becomes more relevant in terms of lower court proceedings where decree of judge is hand written and illegible. Presentation of decree should look formal, well documented and should give a professional image so that enforcement of it in the foreign courts is also possible with ease. Steneo typing and voice writing are two main methods of court reporting around the world. Our court reporting is mostly hand written. I don’t recommend we should introduce voice writing due to lack of resources but at least it should be typed rather than hand written and a qualified person should be authorized to do it.
It’s no surprize that minor changes which are often ignored and seem unimportant once changed really do bring about magical results and therefore should always be worked upon and not to be ignored. Amendment in the present system will not only make our lives easier but would achieve better results and this modification will benefit everybody in the society in terms of less burden, less expense, faith in justice system, less time consumption, more managed and prosper society with an overall fall in rate of corruption in the society which usually arises through feeling of helplessness unfairness and hatred because of lost faith in justice.