Justice Kannan's Legal speak

Where do you begin to read when you want to know the result of the judgment? The last few lines are normally the surest bet because the expressions, ‘in the result’ or ‘in fine’ or ‘in sum’ are invariably a part of a stereotyped template for the conclusion in a judgment. There are also some judges, who begin with devastating candor, such as, ‘the suit/appeal/petition deserves to be dismissed for the following reasons’. If the story begins with expression of sentiment like, ‘this is a pitiable case of the plaintiff’, you know already that the suit is heading for a decree in the final lines. Or, if the case begins in an opening paragraph, ‘the accused stands trial for commission of a heinous crime’, you know that the accused is being shown the prison gates for confinement. The best artistes of writing among judges will use expressions when no two judgments would read alike. The feeling that they would evoke would however be the same as a take- off of an airplane at the beginning and a pe...

The California Supreme Court ruled on May 15th that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory. The California ruling is considered monumental by virtue of the state's size — 38 million out of a U.S. population of 302 million — and its historic role in the vanguard of the many social and cultural changes that have swept the country since World War II. In San Francisco, the reaction was reported to be jubilant. On 18th May, a popular newspaper daily reports that two women in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai who were very ‘intimate’ had set themselves ablaze, clasped to each other, unable to cope with their relatives’ opposition to their intimacy. There is still a sense of revulsion among the Indian community about accepting several ‘other’ types of human relationships which are gaining legitimacy across the globe. The California judgment was not a one-off dispensation but a culmination of widely held public debates, Supreme Court judgments of...

Life’s pendulum swings between two extremes of emotions – of joy and sorrow. You may be able to pack every other emotion with a trace of either one of them but never without it. It is like the VIBGYOR; between the two extremes of colours, lie the whole infinite variety; a combination of every alternating hue that produces the middle one. For instance, the violet and blue produce indigo; the indigo and green produce the blue and so on. A painful labour is indeed the liberating moment for the child. It is the ultimate emotion of pain and joy in the wonder of creation. The final departure is not all sorrow. That there could be a life beyond death is the sobering thought. The loftier prayer is that the departed soul rests in peace without further hovering; that it rests in the cosmic soul from where all life began. The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are forever a fascination, when stories are told and repeated. You laugh and cry with the characters; you experience the warmth of friendsh...

There was a time, when you did not hear another person properly, you would prompt him with a question, ‘pardon?’ The response that is current is, a soft ‘sorry?’ or a request to him to ‘come again?’ or a scowl ‘what?’ The word ‘pardon’ has simply gone out of daily use in words and in action. The French still use the captioned phrase in their daily conversational dialogues. In constitutional parlance, the executive’s power of pardon is associated with signaling a reprieve for a person convicted of a criminal offence. The assumption is, the crime is against not any one individual but against the society and the highest authority in the executive alone could show mercy. Indian law does not recognize the victim to have a power to condone or compound heinous and cognizable offences. The Islamic law is different. Section 403 C of the Criminal Procedure Code in Pakistan, for example, enables the victim’s legal heir the power to let a person go off the noose, when the guilty faces death punish...