Justice delayed
The legal maxim, “justice delayed, is justice denied”, puts into words the frustration of victims of a wrong who are further victimised by a justice system plagued by delays. As I write this week’s column, everyone who has been following the extrajudicial killings of the Apo 6 is awaiting the judgment of the trial court on 9th March 2017. It has been 12 years since six young people were killed by police officers in Abuja. For the victims of the crime there can be no real closure until there is judgment. The prisoners also find themselves on this precarious edge of the justice system.
Nigeria is not the only justice system that suffers from inefficiencies denying citizens of accessible and swift justice. For centuries, even the judges have warned citizens about the time and cost of taking matters to court.
In the case of The Earl of Mexborough v Bower (1843), 7 Beav. 132, Lord Langdale, MR, said, “Many cases occur, in which it is perfectly clear, that by means of a reference to arbitration, the real interests of the parties will be much better satisfied than they could be by any litigation in a court of justice.” A few years later, Charles Dickens shared the same sentiments in his novel, Bleak House, saying: “This is the Court of Chancery,… which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the hear, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give – who does not often give – the warning, ‘Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!’”.
For some matters, it is easy to walk away. But for others, we need the assistance of the courts to get vindication, and it fails us time and time again. I have written on this platform about how I am a bit of a television addict, partial, of course, to law and police dramas. Dick Wolf’s hugely successful Law and Order franchise show that I am not the only one who likes to watch the American justice system on steroids. In shows like Law and Order and CSI, we witness or discover the crime in the opening scene and within an hour, the crime is solved, prosecuted and judgment handed down. That is television! The reality is not as compact. Beyond their entertainment value, I do believe that these shows can be a vehicle for improving the layperson’s understanding of law and the justice. However, law and police dramas have been criticised for creating unreasonable expectations of the system. The reality is that getting justice from the courts can be difficult, sometimes spanning many years. It is not uncommon to hear of matters taking 10 to 25 years to conclude. This flies in the face of the rationale behind limitation statutes, where time bars the bringing of a cause of action to court because of the fear of injustice that may arise in pursuing a “stale” case.
In August 1970, the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren E. Burger, delivered the first “State of the Judiciary” address at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. The theme of his address centred around a quote from legal scholar, Nathan Roscoe Pound, who said at the turn of the 20th Century that the work of the courts in the 20th Century could not be carried out with the methods, the machinery and the means of the 19th Century. Burger identified several difficulties of the American court system, describing it as one with steadily increasing burdens while suffering from deferred maintenance of the judicial machinery. He stressed the importance of better management, methods and trained personnel to secure public confidence in the integrity of the system.
Apart from the need for better funding and more personnel, one of the recommendations of Burger from his address that I can personally relate to is the need to apply techniques of modern business to the purely mechanical operation of the courts. It means using available technology to ease the processes in the movement of cases; and hiring trained administration managers (not lawyers) as has been done in the health care sector in America. I can relate to this analogy because many moons ago, I worked as a healthcare administrator, a position which requires different training from the doctors and nurses and other personnel who deliver the clinical services. Law schools like medical schools do not prepare managers and administrators. Trained administrators hold the key to reform based delivering a more efficient and productive system.
In conclusion, Burger said: “A sense of confidence in the courts is absolutely imperative to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence: one, that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; one, that people who have long been exploited come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching in the smaller transactions of daily life; one, that people come to believe that the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfil its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the streets.”
To fulfil the promise of equal justice under the law, our justice system reform effort requires continuity and change as populations grow; crime increases; and new laws change our society.
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