Justice Nath said the courts must ensure that legal principles do not overshadow the human realities.
NEW DELHI: Supreme Court judge Justice Vikram Nath on Monday said compassion in judging should not be mistaken for favour or leniency, but should instead mean understanding the human circumstances behind a legal dispute without compromising fairness or the law.Speaking at the second Prof. (Dr) N R Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture, Justice Nath said the courts must ensure that legal principles do not overshadow the human realities of those involved in a case.The annual lecture was held on the theme "Judging with Compassion: Human Understanding in the Practice of Law"."Let me say what compassion in judging is not.
It is not favour and it is not leniency.
It is not deciding for a party merely because that party is weak, or allowing emotion to overcome evidence.
And it is certainly not abandoning the law.
Compassion in adjudication means understanding before judging -- the discipline of seeing the human circumstances in which a legal controversy arose.
Its opposite is not strictness, which is sometimes exactly what an institution needs.
The opposite of compassion is indifference," Justice Nath said as per news agency PTI.Justice Nath, who is also the executive chairman of the National Legal Services Authority, stressed that being impartial does not mean becoming detached from the human consequences of judicial decisions.
"The blindfold on Lady Justice does not mean she cannot see.
It means she does not look at who stands before her before deciding what is right.
She still weighs and weighs with care.
A judge must be impartial, but never indifferent," he said.He said the justice system must also consider how its procedures are experienced by people who come before the courts, particularly those who may already be vulnerable."For the survivor made to relive her trauma in the witness box or the litigant who cannot follow the language of the proceedings, the process is what justice actually feels like," he said.
"We must ask whether, for too many, it has itself become a trauma," he said.Referring specifically to cases involving survivors of sexual violence and child witnesses, Justice Nath said courts could adopt a trauma-informed approach without compromising judicial standards.Join conversation Share your thoughts in the comments Be respectful · TOI community guidelines "a trauma-informed courtroom is not a softer courtroom," he said.He also warned against allowing public sentiment to influence judicial fairness, particularly at a time when cases can be tried in the media before courts have reached a conclusion."A compassionate court is not a court with a favourite side.
It is a court that can understand every side, without becoming captive to any.
In an age of trial by television, when the public often decides before we do, that takes the courage to be fair to the person everyone has condemned and the courage to be firm with the person everyone has forgiven," he said.Get the latest India News and Live updates.
Download the TOI app.
