Bhopal: It’s Sunday, but justice Bilal Nazki, a judge of the Bombay high court, isn’t spending it the way he usually spends his weekends—catching up with the family and writing judgements.
Instead, he is 787km away, in the sylvan, 63-acre campus of the National Judicial Academy, or NJA, the only finishing school for judges in the country. In its annual “academic” calendar to June (from last July), are 10 national conferences for high court judges such as Nazki on issues such as cyber law, intellectual property rights, environment, sustainable development, and the impact of international law on Indian courts.
The themes, as evident from their names, are relevant in contemporary India, especially one that sees itself as part of the emerging world order.
Legal view: The National Judicial Academy is slowly repositioning itself as more than a school. It sees itself as a think tank on matters and issues judicial. (Mujeeb Faruqui / Hindustan Times)
There are 20 other judicial academies at the state-level in the country, but opinion on whether judges need to be taught has changed since the 1980s. That was when, Nazki recalls, justice Mohammad Hidayatullah, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, had, while inaugurating a state judicial academy in Andhra Pradesh, wondered whether it was such a good idea to have schools for judges that could possibly influence their perception, and consequently, their judgements.
“There was a time when people thought judges should not be taught once they become judges,” says Nazki. “Today, judges must get influenced by developments taking place in other fields of human activity. If I have completed my degree in law 35 years ago, the issues that are confronting us now, the laws that are affecting us now were not there at that time. It, therefore, becomes necessary for us to update ourselves,” he adds, referring specifically to cyber law.
Nazki, 61, became a lawyer in 1973. The personal computing revolution happened in the US in the 1980s, and in India in the 1990s. He says India has seen a “technological, scientific, economic and politico-social revolution,” in the past 15 years that has made judicial education relevant. And NJA was born exactly 15 years ago.
Judges and education
NJA was established in 1993 under the Societies Registration Act, 1960, as an independent society funded by the government. It was conceived as a joint venture among the bar, academia and the government to strengthen the administration of justice through judicial education, research and policy development. It took almost as long for the institute to get off the ground as some cases through the Indian judicial system, and the campus was ready only by 2002 (it cost around Rs80 crore).