Justice delayed – A brief Glance at one Court Room
11.06.2023
When LALIT members sit in the Supreme Court Room Number 23 waiting for the Constitutional case (Lindsey Claire Collen Seegobin v. The State and Others) to be called – an average time of 2 hours 30 minutes over the nine times we have been in Court, so far – we learn a great deal about the justice system, in general. It is fascinating. And it is also disturbing.
Today, we will share what we learnt from the lengthy “Cause List” last time we were in Court for our Constitutional challenge to the amendment of the Citizenship Act, which includes making Mauritian citizenship more fragile to executive powers of banishment.
It was Tuesday 30 May 2023, when cases on the Cause List came up “for mention”, which means the cases have not yet reached the stage “for argument”.
We found that it was not at all unusual that it would be nearly a year before “argument” will start in the case we were there for. The Lindsey Collen Seegobin case has been set “for argument on the plea” for Friday 28 July at 10:30 a.m.
In fact, we can, so far, call ourselves lucky. Here are the figures, at a glance:
No. of cases called that day: 188
(Of these) No. of cases that date back MORE THAN FIVE (5) years: 99
(Of these) No. of cases that date back MORE THAN TEN (10) YEARS: 29
That means over half have been in the supreme Court for over 5 years, and over one-sixth for over 10 years.
The oldest case that day dates back 23 years.
We were shocked to realize the seriousness of this apparent problem, a problem which is evidently systemic.
But, we found out afterwards that things may be much worse.
After our case had come up for mention and before heading home, during a conversation in the men’s toilets, one of our members met someone whose case, he told our member, had been in the Supreme Court some five years, it is true. But his case had, previous to this, been in another Court from over 20 years ago. So, his Calvary may well be an indicator of yet any number of other cases in the Supreme Court Room No 23 having been “in the courts” for much longer than the date we are using from the Supreme Court Cause List.
As the legal saying goes: “Justice delayed is justice denied”.
Looking into the history of this maxim, we found it attributed to Gladstone from 1868 in the House of Commons in England. He had probably read Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, a novel that came out in 1853 and that was built around absurdly long delays in Court proceedings in England at the time.
But long before that, the Magna Carta of the year 1215 at clause 40 already contained the same nugget of meaning, “To no one will we [the King of England] sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.” So, that was a promise made by a ruler not to, inter alia, “delay” “justice”.
The problem, deemed serious, was addressed in the 1998 Report of the Presidential Commission on Structure and Operation of the Judicial System and Legal Professions of Mauritius which was chaired by Lord Mackay. But, this pertinent Report has been stuffed into some “tirwar” instead of being debated and then all good recommendations put into practice.
We are now in the Third Millennium, over 800 years since the King of England’s promise. We still go to the King’s Privy Council for appeals, which is why we mention Gladstone and the Magna Carta. And yet justice continues to be delayed over a period of more than 800 years.
We realize that the problem of systemic delays may well be one of the reasons why the four loud-speakers in the public area of Court Room Number 23 do not get turned on, and why most Attorneys either do not turn their microphones on, or actually turn their microphones away from their mouths. The whole Court is somehow ashamed of the way they all work, day in and day out.
We call for the Prime Minister to launch a nation-wide debate on the Mackay Commission Report, as a starting point for reform of the judicial system. The Bar Council could also launch such a debate, if the executive branch does not, or in addition to a state-organized debate. Then every Village and Town, every GP Class, every political party, every University debating society, could organize a debate on the Report.
LALIT
