The Supreme Court has struck down an “incomprehensible” judgment of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and suggested judges to take care of readability and brevity of their writings.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna additionally touched upon facets of judgment writing, reminding judges that their selections “should be understandable to those whose lives and affairs are affected by the outcome of the case”.
The bench stated it discovered it “difficult to navigate through the maze of incomprehensible language” within the High Court’s determination. “Inconsistent decisions have a serious impact on the dignity of judicial institutions.”
It states: “A plaintiff for whom the verdict is primarily will be placed in an even more difficult position. Untrained in law, the plaintiff is faced with language that is not heard, written or spoken in contemporary expression.”
Writing for the bench, Justice Chandrachud stated: “Such language in the judgment defeats the purpose of judicial writing. Writing style judgment before us in appeal undermines the effectiveness of the judicial process”.
The bench stated it needed to return the sooner two different judgments to the Himachal Pradesh High Court and in addition confronted difficulties with an order of the Allahabad High Court.
“The purpose of judicial writing”, Justice Chandrachud wrote, “is not to confuse or confuse the reader behind a veneer of complex language. To provide the judge with an easily understandable analysis of the issues of law and the facts arising for adjudication. should be written for. Decisions are mainly for those whose cases are decided by judges. Decisions of High Courts and Supreme Court also serve as a precedent to guide future benches. must be meaningful to those whose lives and affairs are affected by the outcome of the matter. While a judgment is read even by those who have training in the law, they do not represent the entire universe of discourse.”
Underlining the significance of the written phrase, the SC in its August 16 order stated: “Belief in the judicial process is based on the belief that its written word generates. If the meaning of the written word is lost in the language, the ability of the judge to maintain the reader’s confidence is severely destroyed.”
“Judgment writing”, Justice Chandrachud stated, can also be “an important instrument in promoting the rule of law and preventing the rule of law”.
Pointing out a few of the trendy issues with writing judgments, the SC stated that “brevity” had change into “an unintentional victim of an overburdened judiciary” and a “cut-copy-paste facility provided by software developers”. .
Justice Chandrachud stated that he himself is offering title and sub-heading in his judgments in order to help the reader in offering a structured sequence and added that it will be helpful to hold out the paragraph quantity and desk of contents.
The judgment careworn the necessity to make selections accessible to all, together with folks with disabilities, and suggested to make sure that watermarks in uploaded orders aren’t improperly positioned as it could result in blind folks utilizing display screen readers. Documents shall be inaccessible.
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
