It is disheartening to point out that the prestigious Apex Court of our country has not been keeping any public records of its proceedings. Since it didn’t broadcast live and due to security and space issues, a general citizen couldn’t enter without a pass and legal scholars couldn’t attend on Mondays and Fridays when the S.C adjudged new issues. It however changed after the 2018 case of Swapnil Tripathi v Supreme Court of India which suggested broadcasting lawsuits. The then Chief Justice Dipak Mishra and Justice A M Khanwilkar ruled that the feed webcast fall within the preview of right to seek fairness under Art. 21 and issuing legal proceedings of the court is an element of Art. 129. He further stated that this wouldn’t just benefit the young petitioner who wasn’t able to attend the courtroom but also many civilians, legal aspirants and reporters.
The Attorney General recommended setting norms for live stream of proceedings and to include cases of Constitutional benches and to exclude cases related to national security and matrimony.
It was highlighted that other countries also record their proceedings in the US even though videos aren’t permitted but verbal reasoning are audio taped and made available for the general public to listen from http://www.oyez.org . In Australia lawsuits are videotaped and uploaded in the websites of high courts whereas in China legal issues even from trial courts are live streamed. India being another major democracy didn’t adhere to maintaining these records. After the issue raised by Swapnil Tripathi the apex court decided to bring changes as it stated it was important for the public to be concerned with legal proceedings and it is necessary to maintain transparency and openness with the citizens of our country.
At present there are 100s of countries that have enforced laws related to court proceedings. In 1990 there were only around 13 countries with such legislations but now many Courts have started publishing details of recorded court issues for the general public to view. Numerous international legislatures and authoritative have identified the fundamental right to be well informed. Therefore they have executed effective legislations to protect that right. It has already been implemented by the UN, Organization of American States, Council of Europe as well as African Union. In China the legal proceeding that are telecasted are selected beforehand by the government.
This is done to ensure that there is control over the knowledge shared with people and also to ensure that their faith in the system remains strong. They seem to have a complex concern of judicial transparency and authorization of what Intel to be publicized. As for other countries such many have guidelines to start telecast post 10-20 seconds to avoid delicate information from being published, information such as of the parties. The case of Pac Rim Cayman LLC v. Republic of El Salvador was the first ever case that was live streamed under Art.10.21.2 of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) that requires judicial hearings to be made public except maintenance of privacy regarding certain cases that are related to national importance.
The Apex courts of Canada, Brazil, England and Germany, China live-stream their legal proceedings. US don’t follow the same but uploads audio tapes at their official website.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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We are also running a series Inspirational Women from January 2021 to March 31,2021, featuring around 1000 stories about Indian Women, who changed the world. #choosetochallenge