Laws are Nothing without Courts and Just Judges

The importance of courts can never be overestimated. They come very close to the people. They settle the estates of the dead, protect the living and safe guard the interests of the unborn. They enforce rights of the petty briber and the powerful corruptor alike, the cop killer and the killer cop, the castle dweller and the alleyway dweller, murder suspects and white collar crime suspects, the over lords of the under world and the gang of the slum alike.

When the rule of the robes proves a mirage, the rule of robbery gets support and sanction and in time people abandon the Government for the gang. The solution is in making the system of justice and justicing accessible to the downtrodden and the poor through dispersal of the power of judicial appointment and decentralization of the Judiciary, something lacking in the harmonized draft Constitution.

Our courts have lost their credibility and prestige. Corruption has crept in. Ethics has been thrown out and no longer form inviolable virtue. Delay of dockets and suits and numerous adjournments frustrate the hope of justice for the seekers. While the system is accessible to those from the creamy layer, the under-privileged y and are priced out of the institution.

The Bar, an indispensable factor in the adversarial system, is too expensive for the lowly. The fees and the formalities make the law too dear for the underprivileged. The hierarchy adds to the cost, the delay and the uncertainty of the final verdict.

Appeals upon appeals make justice through litigation inordinately dilatory and costly, and the law becomes the last means for the aggrieved to get relief. The litigant has only one life but litigation has several lives to see its end. Judgments typically take years to pronounce and some judges do not pronounce any judgment at all. They would seem to be unaccountable since there is almost nothing to be accountable to.

Judges are appointed in bizarre fashion. There is room for nepotism, tribalism, cronyism and corruption. Reform is necessary even here and a sense of scientific spirit and reason is needed if the judicature is not to become a caricature, or a torture of the right to justice.

Judges have a heavy responsibility in the matter of chronic backlog. In Kenya, litigation is known to last up to half a century. The art of fast disposal of cases seems to have become alien to some judges, who cannot have a brief hearing and delivery of judgment.

A leisurely and even bellicose style by advocates, a high-and-mighty bearing, and slow and endless arguments are hampering the competent performance of the judges. Originality, imagination and talent have become scarce commodities. These are mostly covered up by demands for more judges.
Let us appoint able persons who can efficiently and satisfactorily deal with the accumulation of work. What is more let us then leave them alone to do their work. Otherwise, we may continue with a system in which the outcome is pre-determined and the process then shaped to assure it ahead of time, thus perfectly adhering to this exchange from Chapter twelve of Alice in the Wonderland:

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. “No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first verdict afterward.” “Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!” “Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple. “I won’t!” said Alice. “Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.

How is that remotely just or fair under any definition of those terms.