Keeping abreast

Judiciary needs to keep up with economic knowledge

Do senior judges and regulators who have to increasingly deliver pronouncements and findings on complex technical and economic issues have a chance to keep abreast with the rapid changes taking place to knowledge? Recently the Bombay High Court delivered a verdict on taxation issues relating to Vodafone, a telecom service provider, and the Competition Commission of India pronounced on the conduct of sugar mills. In such instances the judicial or quasi-judicial authority needs to have a knowledge of not just the law but also have some grounding in the imperatives governing market-driven economies and ground realities in particular industries. The latter keep changing rapidly with technological developments altering the rules of the game even as the number of regulators with specific economic jurisdictions keeps going up.

There is already some institutional support in this endeavour. The National Judicial Academy, a training institute for judicial officers, has established the "national judicial education strategy" which holds programmes for high court judges and district judges. But the training usually pertains to matters like correct legal procedure and evaluating evidence. This does not sufficiently help a judge when dealing with scientific evidence in judging, say, an intellectual property dispute in pharmaceuticals or information technology software. Consider the differences with senior Indian civil servants who can, for instance under the Colombo Plan, attend courses in internationally reputable institutions to acquaint themselves with the latest developments in economic thinking and public administration.

Given the increasing calls being made upon the judiciary to freely and fairly determine contentious issues which are grounded in the latest technology and economic principles, senior judges and regulators would benefit from refreshing their knowledge beyond the domain of law. There is a need, therefore to formalise a system whereby senior judges and regulators can expand their knowledge base in keeping with the changing needs of society. The cost of even the best such training has been substantially reduced by the rapidly expanding fields of e-learning and e-tutoring. Modules can be prepared keeping the needs of judges in mind and they can pursue them interactively, with guidance from remotely placed experts. The process can be topped up with a course or residential seminar at a reputed institution. All professionals - not just civil servants or doctors - need to keep abreast with the new knowledge of the day and there is an urgent need to set in place a system to deliver this to judges.