Future lies in commercial litigation: Justice MM Sundresh to lawyers

The Supreme Court's Justice MM Sundresh recently said that young lawyers must realise that the legal landscape in the country is shifting from conventional litigation to predominantly commercial litigation..“We are moving away from traditional or conventional litigation to a predominantly commercial litigation. This is the truth. I want to tell all the young lawyers that the future lies in commercial litigation. You will find amendments being made time and again in commercial litigation. Almost all enactments are works in progress. This includes both procedural and substantive laws,” Justice Sundresh said.He added that if one looked at the Arbitration Act, the Mediation Act, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), and even the Commercial Courts Act, one will realise that these enactments were being updated through several amendments to keep them in line with international standards..“There is constant churning. An attempt is being made by the government to keep them updated to be on par with international standards. What is happening as a result is that lawyers, litigants, judges are all grappling with different scenarios. With new amendments come new challenges. Lawyers with a conservative mindset tend to struggle with changes. The same applies to courts also. If you see arbitration now, a lot of emphasis is placed on party autonomy, coupled with the role is played by the arbitrator as well as the court,” he said..Justice Sundresh was speaking at the launch of the book Commercial Dispute Resolution- State of the Law in India, edited by Advocate Anirudh Krishnan, who practices at the Madras High Court..The judge praised Krishnan for not restricting the book merely to commercial litigation practices in India, but also highlighting the practices in other countries such as Singapore, UK, USA and Australia.“Those countries have followed a different yardstick and said that if one is a third party, it must walk away from the dispute resolution mechanism. This book goes beyond Arbitration Act and deals with every other related aspect. It makes one think and makes one want to read it again,” he said..Justice Sundresh also commended the efforts of young lawyers who had co-authored the book..The book, published by LexisNexis, was launched in Chennai on Saturday, August 31. Also in attendance at the launch was Justice SS Sundar of the Madras High Court. American lawyer Gary B Born, guest of honour at the event, sent a video message addressing the gathering and praising the book.The book has been compiled and edited by Krishnan and includes contributions from his current as well as former colleagues at AK Law Chambers..Other contributors include Nischal Dev, Goda Raghavan, Maithreyi Canthaswamy Sharma, Keerthikiran Murali, S Kaushik Ramaswamy, Pravarshini Palanivel, Janani Shankar, Ashwin Shanbhag, BA Sujay Prasanna, Hitesh Singhvi, Adarsh Subramanian, Adith Narayan, Sella Visalakshi, Ramkishore Karanam, Garima Kirti, Sriram Venkatavaradan, Saai Sudharsan Sathiyamoorthy, N Sasank Iyer, Pranay Prakash, Shiva Krishnamurti, Chandini Pradeep Kumar, Akash Loya, Advaidh Nelakanttan, Mahasweta M, Athif Ahmed Nazeem, Mohit Kumar, Kritanjali Sarda, Anisha Chandrakumar, Abhishek R, Suhas MS, Aishwarya Vijayaraghavan, Varun Venkatesan, Rupikaa Srinivasan, Anuraag Rajagopalan, Rida Ameen, Ananya Krishnan, Vishnupriya Ravichander, Pragya Vyas, Samriddhi Sanga and Anirudh Ramkumar..The book identifies the issues with the commercial dispute resolution system as of 2015. It analyses the working of commercial dispute resolution-related legislation post-2015, namely, the Commercial Courts Act, 2015; the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016; amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 in 2015 and subsequent amendments; and the Mediation Act, 2023.