In search of my tribe

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Zest and passion. That is the mind space of a young legal entrant. Standing on the edge of a majestic ocean. Dreamy eyed. Ready to take the plunge with all the vigour that youth affords. Only to be surrounded by seaweeds.

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No schooling prepares us for what awaits us on the field. What it takes. Legal skills and critical analytical thinking are essential. But they come a lot later. The first test is of your personality. Do you have the patience that it takes to sustain in the system?

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Patience has come easy to me. Have always had that in my foundation. Perhaps, that is the reason why in the four houses at my school, i was a made a prefect for yellow house. The one that symbolised patience. But nine years in the profession and my wells of patience seem to be on the verge of drying up too.

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There is no denying that patience is a virtue. That all good things in life take time. But that is not to say that one’s life should come to be defined by a never -ending wait. A wait sprawling over not just a lifetime but in some instances generations. A wait that leads to some fruition only to be met with an infructuous claim. A wait that feeds off the zeal. There is no virtue in that.?

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83,745. This is the pending number of Sindh High Court cases as at 30.06.2023. And these are not just numbers. Those numbers imbue many hopes, dreams and aspirations, from as far back as 1980(s), (if not further back) awaiting their turn for justice. Justice which stands drowned out, inter alia, by frivolity - which too makes up these numbers.?

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Given that the statistics are slightly backdated, one can only imagine that the number must have increased. Against that pendency, currently we have a total of 32 Justices in the Sindh High Court, against the sanctioned strength of 40 to clear out the backlog. For the Justices to clear it, assuming if they were to share the burden equally, each would have to decide a total of 2,537 cases. That is if each bench was to decide a case per day (including holidays), it would take them an average of 7 years to clear it. And this is without taking into account the fresh litigation being filed everyday.?

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Sheer will power and effort would not suffice to bring equilibrium to the system. For there are countless adjournments, strikes and time constraints that stand in the way of that clearance. Result. We are stuck in an inertia; measuring out our youth in court adjournments.?

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There is a complacency that has seeped bone deep in the system and its actors. It is what it is, we say. This is the way things are. The generational trauma being passed down from the old guard to the new. The new giving up arms in the face of the monstrosity of its slowness and either exiting the system altogether or becoming immune to it. Measuring out the minutes and hours in a limbo. Quietly suffering its sling and arrows.?

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But perhaps one has no choice but to take up arms against the sea of troubles that the system throws at us. There is simply no way that the system will perform, let alone effectively, on the trajectory that it currently finds itself on. A major overhaul in terms of the processes and approach has to come from within to bolster its engine. This is the challenge that confronts the new guard. It is an onerous one but not impossible should we have the will, the vision and the support of the old guard in dismantling the archaic practices that gnaw at it.

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We need creative and out of the box novel situations to revamp the engine of justice. On the civil side alone, we continue to follow a 1908 archaic Code of Civil Procedure, the application of which in most cases has become redundant. And why wouldn’t it? It was created for a century ago. And it is no secret that from that century to this, the world has moved at a breakneck speed.?

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Till today, on our Civil Code, a beat of drums is one of the modes in which summons can be served upon a defendant. This is but one instance of the chasm that exists between the laws and its practise. And how an outdated code adds to the burden on the system by relying on old, time consuming practices that have no relevance in today’s world. Even our benefactors who left us with the 1908 code, have their updated Civil Procedure Rules, 1998.?

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This example is but a drop in the ocean of the many issues and other outdated laws that provide a breeding ground for laxity within the system. The challenge that lies before us is to organise ourselves and slowly and systematically identify these hiccups within the system. Once identified, to begin to take inspiration and wisdom from other jurisdictions, to come up with alternate, time-saving and more relevant processes for use by the Court and lobby for updated laws.

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It is a tragedy that the legal system that was once viewed with awe has had a severe hit. Winston Churchill, during World War II, had remarked that if the courts are functioning and dispensing justice, then despite the war, nothing could go wrong. We, because of our own practises and apathy have got the courts to a point where we have compromised their efficient functioning and the integrity of this profession and in doing so lost the confidence of the public. To quote Lord Denning out of context, “Justice must be rooted in confidence.”?

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It is on my generation to rectify this wrong and give it our all to set the system on the right trajectory. We owe this not only to ourselves; for maximising our potential and shrugging off the stagnation, to truly play our professional role in being effective administrators of the justice system but also to the ones that come after us. Let our legacy be one of revamping the system rather than one of taking it head speed into an abyss.

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