The National Law University Orissa (NLU-O) recently concluded a two-day national seminar on “Judiciary, Ethics and Justice Delivery in India”. The two-day seminar held on January 21-22 was orgnaised in collaboration with the Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi.

According to Prof.(Dr.) Faizan Mustafa, Vice-Chancellor, NLU-O (who we have interviewed here), such seminars are necessary and the idea of bringing together experts and scholars in the field is that they should address not only legal education, rather they should aim to spread ‘justice education’ as well.

With Odisha Chief Minster Naveen Patnaik present on the first day as Chief Guest and Supreme Court Judge Deepak Mishra as Chief Speaker (both pictured left)  the inaugural session witnessed a discussion on the importance of ethics in every aspect of one's life. Patnaik, quoting Mahata Gandhi, said that there should be “no gap between truthfulness and law”. Patnaik also stressed on the need to restore ethical values in our judicial system. Patnaik told the students of the university that lawyers of repute never compromise on ethics at any cost.

The speech given by Justice Deepak Mishra reflected a similar line of thought. He stressed on the importance of a “cultural, ethical and independent judiciary” – that, in his opinion, is the mark of a ‘civilised society’. Justice Mishra stated that ethics can never be ‘static’. Despite the temporal nature of ethics that keep constantly evolving with time and mindset, he urged the gathering to understand that personal values should never get in the way of collective values of judiciary and hence, personal values should not hamper decision making of a judge.

During the plenary session of Day 1, an interesting question was put forth by Dr. Justice V.S Malimath: why is judicial administration concerned with quantitative performance assessment and not with qualitative assessment? According to him, the number of cases disposed off are not as important as understanding how effectively justice has been meted out in those cases. Another interesting point was made by Senior Advocate Jayant Das who felt the admission to the Bar must be more rigid, adding another dimension to the AIBE debate. The first day of the seminar also saw paper presentations by students and academicians from reputed institutions all across India.

The second day saw the focus shift to accountability within the judiciary. Prof. (Dr.) P.K Sarkar, Faculty of Law, Utkal University opined that the accountability of judiciary can be more effective if there is Constitutional provision for the same, that there is a need for introspection by the Supreme Court and greater participation by civil society, legal academia and law students.Prof. (Dr.) V.D Sebastian, Professor of Law, KIIT School raised questions regarding the accountability of judges and laid down criticism of the “Bench system” practiced by the Supreme Court where decisions are rarely given by a single judge.

The second day also saw paper presentations by students and academicians from reputed institutions all across India and the Valedictory Address was given by Prof. P.Ishwar Bhat, Vice-Chancellor, National Law University of Juridicial Sciences, Kolkata.

At a time where the pendency of cases, delays in the judicial system and the judiciary itself is under immense scrutinity, the seminar provided an interesting platform for discussing and addressing the pvarious issues at hand and also allowed for the dissemination of information from an expert's point of view.