Allahabad High Court<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThere is no denying that bar associations will compete inter se with each other about location decisions. Bad blood between fractions of the bar and even counter-agitations over location decisions, plus local pride and personality conflicts are often pre-eminent. Conflict over location decisions is often prolonged, bitter and anti-authority.<\/p>\n
MANAGING DISSENT<\/strong><\/p>\nHigh volatility among lawyers and sometimes the populace may be a relatively novel phenomenon for the judiciary, but it is not for governance institutions or the Executive-Legislature combine. Governance is, in one sense, the effective management of public dissent. Cross-sectional volatility is, to put it another way, the very stuff of democratic politics.<\/p>\n
Indeed, there is no ground for saying and doing nothing by the paramount institutions of governance. Deep sensitivity to justified demands is also one way of governance. The history of postures towards demands for decentralisation of justice institutions is one replete with indifference, non-consultation and non-decision.<\/p>\n
The way ahead ought to be different and more participative. Ad hoc approaches ought to yield to a clear enunciation of access to the administration of justice. The CJI and High Court chief justices may, in the first place, articulate the criteria for formation of benches which will be discussed with the Bar and other affected interests. After that, the Executive and Legislature should enunciate a clear national policy of access to justice and judicial infrastructure. The idea that there should be peripatetic circuit justices may also be explored as an alternative to permanent benches.<\/p>\n
Access to courts is too vital a constitutional affair to be left to the whims and fancies of lawyers and justices, the Executive and the Legislature.<\/p>\n
The time has come after six decades of the Constitution to have a more workable and sensible national policy rather than ad hocism and deafening silence on actual demands for access to justice.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u2014The author is an international law scholar, an acclaimed teacher and a well-known writer and he draws on some materials from his first Sailabala Pujari memorial lecture at the NLUO, Cuttack. Sailabala was the first woman lawyer in western Odisha and led the long movement for the bench at Sambalpur<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UP lawyers demanding a western bench of the Allahabad High Court, in New Delhi. Photo: Anil Shakya Though the demand for more High Court benches often turns into an emotional and political issue, there is no law restricting more from coming up ~By Upendra Baxi The Supreme Court, in many decisions, has upheld […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4669],"tags":[1257,5915,20232,684],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Western-UP-Lawyers-protest-for-western-bnech-of-Alld-highcourt-at-janter-manter-New-delhi-on-26-Nov-2014_photo-by-anil-shakya-5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}