Justice Kannan's Legal speak

Being conspicuous by absence is a popular expression. It would have been everyone’s experience that when you attend a social gathering, and if you happen to get there without accompanying your spouse, the host more often asks about the absence of your partner, than greeting your presence by a warm hand shake or a welcome hug. It has not however, probably ever happened that a country’s Premier is making an official visit and the press and people, diplomats and dignitaries have been talking about the absence of visiting dignitary’s girl friend at the Republic Day celebrations at New Delhi than about the significance of his visit. The paparazzi would have it that Nicolas Sarkozi looked melancholic at the Taj Mahal, making an obvious inference to his emotions without his girl friend, Ms.Carla Bruni. “Le Sarko show” reveals that if Sarkozi decides to marry, Ms.Bruni will be his third wife; Ms.Bruni has herself been never married before and about the institution of marriage itself, she is re...

Did you know that it was Julius Caesar who started the first newspaper in 56 BC? It was called Acta Biruna. Despite lingering declines in circulation and advertising revenues in some regions of the world, the newspaper industry continues to be a powerful and expanding force. The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) reported that in 2005 that more than 8,000 newspapers were published worldwide, with an estimated daily readership of one billion. According to WAN, the number of free and paid-for titles was up 9% since 2001, which represented about 550 new dailies. A large percentage (76%) of worldwide newspaper circulation was concentrated in just five countries. China is the world leader, with 23 of the top 100 most-circulated papers, while Japan had 22 titles in the top 100. India , the United Kingdom , and the United States follow the lead, with 17, 7, and 7, respectively. You should pick up the newspaper first before anyone else at home does; when the papers are neatly folded and...

Striking lawyers and boycott of courts are old news. Striking medicos is the latest thing. Thankfully, they have cried halt to their protests. Doctors of Tamil Nadu and Delhi, from among 262 government and private medical colleges that turn out about 28,000 doctor-graduates every year, seem to be more averse to taking to compulsory service in rural areas than their counterparts studying elsewhere in the country. Kerala government has already enforced compulsory rural service after their minimum 5 ½ year stint in medical colleges for doctors, for the last 3 years. Striking students said that it made no sense to send tyros like them to villages. Why not despatch the well trained, experienced doctors in government service to the villages, they ask? Albert Schweitzer, a German doctor spent most of his life working in remote Africa. The renowned doctor and author, who wrote by the name, A.J. Cronin ( have you read The Citadel?) spent practising among the mining communities and his novel was...

All religious practices admit of animal sacrifices and they represent the occurrences as modes of expiation of sins that human conduct is susceptible to. Of them, goat is special. There are rituals connected to this blighted quadruped among Romans, Hitttites, Indians, and Tibetians. Our Muslim brethren have recently celebrated Bakrid. On this day a goat or Bakr (Urdu) is offered in sacrifice to commemorate the sacrifice of Prophet Ibrahim, who willingly agreed to kill his son at the behest of God. According to Islamic belief, to test Ibrahim's faith, Allah commanded him to sacrifice his son Ismail. He agreed to do it but found his paternal feelings hard to suppress. So he blind - folded himself before putting Ismail on the altar at the mount of Mina near Mecca. When he removed his bandage after performing the act, he saw his son standing in front of him, alive. On the altar lay a slaughtered lamb. This festival coincides with the Haj pilgrimage in Mecca. The lamb is Halal, meaning ...

What was your feeling when you heard that Benazir Bhutto had been shot on 27th December 2007? Politicians are the only types who are adored and hated in equal proportions, often in gigantic proportions at that. The killings of politicians have this unique expression, ‘assassination’ that does not apply to others. The very word simmers in blood and violence. Shakespeare is believed to have invented the word. He uses the word 'assassination' first in end of Act I of Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth is convincing Macbeth to kill Banquo. The etymology is a mutation of the Arabic "haššāšīn" (حشّاشين). However, there are those who dispute this etymology, arguing that it originates from Marco Polo's account of his visit to Alamut in 1273. , in which he describes a drug whose effects are more like those of alcohol than of hashish. Latin switched the 'sh' sound for the’s’ sound. Whatever be the origin of the word, it leaves a bloody trail consuming one after another in ...

Have you heard of a coloured person being accused of racial practice? If the answer is yes, we are confronted with a situation of an oxymoron, the same way as we could be talking about a legal murder or a wise fool. A racial slur could be hurled by only a person that is socially depicted as superior against a person perceived as inferior. A black man cannot indulge in racist remark by calling a white man as white, while a white man would be accused of racial innuendo if he refers to a black man by his colour. To accuse an Indian, such as Harbhajan Singh as having indulged in a racial remark against Symonds, an Australian is ex facie untenable. It is obvious that the Australians have a racial mindset because they do not see Symonds as belonging to their own race and see him only as a descendent of the aborigines of their country. It is an irony that a South African, Mike Proctor, who till yesterday was practicing apartheid in his country delivered the verdict and sentenced Bhajji to a t...

The deletion of property as a fundamental right by the 44th amendment was made in the context of agrarian reform and prevention of economic concentration of wealth. No one thought at that time that liberalization policies would woo the rich to such an extent that there would soon be reversal of trend when lands would go to the hands of the industrialists on specious grounds of rewarding them as promoters of progress and prosperity. SEZs and infrastructural developmental needs are seen as the new mantra to supplant farmers’ needs to hold their lands. Probably, we have come a way far ahead to resist change. Could there at least be attempts to ensure some statutory changes to placate the righteous indignation against the systematic deprivation of property from farmers for establishing industries and for laying roads? The establishment of SEZ at Ghaziabad by acquisition of fertile agricultural lands has fanned the controversy centre-stage to transport it as public interest litigation befor...

For us lawyers, the defining moment in a case hard-fought is the occasion when the judgment is pronounced. What do you think breaks or warms the heart for a publisher or an editor of a law journal? How far have we won the approbation could be estimated not merely by the strength of our readership. May be, for newspapers and TV channels the readership quotient will assure to them increased revenue and a justification for hiking the advertisement tariffs. In a law journal, there is no advertisement to boost revenues. The readership runs only in terms of thousands and even apart from minding the number of subscribers, we can judge ourselves only by what we have done. We set the judgment day as 31st December 2008 and here are the results. In 2007, we have published 6 volumes in regular weekly issues and 2 volumes as supplements. The reported Madras HC judgments were 895 and of the Supreme Court, 282 judgments. Volume 7 (Supplement) had a tally of 127 and 52 respectively of Madras HC and SC...

Bandhs are not legal; there is no fundamental right to strike and boycotts are not ethical. Each of the forms of protest has been discredited by the Supreme Court. To unionists and politicians, they are hateful pronouncements. For the peace-loving citizen, they are distilled expressions of sanity. On which side are you? Just as a handful of lawyers were busying themselves to expound the illegality of declaring bandhs, which countered the Supreme Court’s specific injunctions, more than a mere motley crowd of our fraternity gave expressions to boycotting courts. No one used the argument that the section of lawyers were indulging in a type of action that was pronounced as unethical and unprofessional. Is there a merit to boycotting courts, regardless of what the Supreme Court has said about it? Bandh, as a desi form, is gift of Bharath to the world; strike is an innovation of organized labor to force a bargain against capital; boycott was what was practiced against Boycott! Wikipedia trac...