May 31, 2019 Friday

Bedtime Story 

The Human Apes Behind the Judiciary

Of course, they were loath to speak out the naked truth about the Chief Justices and other Judges of lower courts engaging in direct corruption but then all truths need not be spelt out.

Yet there have been instances of a few rare judges who have come out of their closet or rather stepped down from their elevated pedestals post-retirement and spoken candidly about the rot in the system where they were engaged in for decades.

One of such rare gem of an outspoken judge was Justice Ruma Pal who was the judge of the Supreme Court of India from January 28 of 2000 to June 2 of 2006.

She was promoted from her previous position of Calcutta High Court Judge where her tenure lasted for 10 years which gives her in total a generous numbers of years of experience in higher and the highest judiciary of India.

My own personal experience in the courts is that in general the working advocates and the officers of the courts have a fair idea of the character, integrity and academic discipline of abidance to the sacrosanct principle of common law/judicial precedent of each individual judge.

The judges are as human as it gets with each one having his or her character and personality and subjective view of the world that often casts its shadow on their decision making.

For instance in my personal encounters with at least fifteen or even more judges at various levels ranging from district consumer forums to metropolitan magistrates to judges of civil and sessions courts to High Court judges I have seen various degrees of liberality in granting bails to accused for the same charges in the same FIR.

Some are extremely liberal in granting bail to the accused on the ground that no under trial should be spending a single day in either police or judicial custody no matter how heinous the crime allegedly committed by the accused.

                   

Then on the other hand there are judges who are strongly swayed by the severity of the cases where there had been brutal murder, dastardly and horrifying acts of gang rape and murder, sexual offenses against children or some major public tragedy which had led to loss of several lives such as a fire in a restaurant or collapse of an overhead foot bridge where just the nature of the crime or the high number of casualties sways the judge into rejecting the bail applications of the accused by the prosecution.

While law has been designed to be objective and to follow its precedent human apes in the form of judges bring along with them their own subjectivity and arbitrariness that sometimes surprises even the most seasoned advocates.

But subjectivity apart, at the fifth V M Tarkunde Memorial Lecture that was delivered on November 10, 2011 (at the height of the alleged $40 billion 2G spectrum scam by the politicians and government officers under the coalition government of United Progressive Alliance) the former judge of the Supreme Court Ruma Pal highlighted several deficiencies that are pervasive in the higher judiciary of India.

By the way, this was one of the many corruptions scandals under the coalition government  of the Congress party that would destroy the future political prospects of the Indian National Congress, give them a crushing defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha or the General Elections and change the political landscape of the country forever.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 30, 2019 Thursday

Bedtime Story 

The state of the Third Branch in Hindu Nation

It is impossible for any society to impart a meaningful justice either criminal or civil to its citizens that is both overpopulated and suffers from inequality of unbelievable proportions.

It is an openly accepted fact that judiciary system in countries such as India and it likes are out of bounds of 95% of its population.

It is not surprising to come across the adjectives such as “crisis”, “clogged”, “failure” and so on for the Indian judiciary by the very people who are most closely associated with it.       

The World Bank report of 2012 had the following statement with respect to governance in India:

“Although India’s courts are notoriously inefficient, they at least comprise a functioning independent judiciary.

 

Property rights are not fully secure, but the rule of law, a legacy of British rule, generally prevails.”

From the conclusion it is evident the Hindu justice system is deeply flawed but not hopeless as understood by the literal sense of the word.

The pendency of cases in the Indian courts runs into tens of millions if not into hundreds with the state being, by far, the biggest litigant of the country.

In spite of losing the cases in the lower courts they keep on appealing and piling cases at the higher appellate courts only adding to the burden on the judiciary.

Over and above this massive pendency of cases there is on average 20% vacancy of the sanctioned positions for judges which if filled could help to some extent lower the pile up of cases in the courts.

Both these factors (massive pendency and high vacancy) are worsened by the plague of corruption that has grown its deadly tentacles in all aspects of the Hindu society including judiciary with no aspect of transaction remaining uncontaminated from it.

There is not an iota of doubt (albeit impossible to prove) that corruption is rampant in Hindu courts occurring in myriad of forms ranging from overtly direct bribes to judges to much more subtle ways in the form of delays or other such manipulations of orders and dates by bribing the junior officers of the court.

The most worrisome aspect of judicial corruption of India is that it has percolated its highest echelons which made the legal activist and Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan blurt out in 2009 that “out of the last 16 to 17 Chief Justices, half have been corrupt.”

It is just that such senior-most activist-type and celebrity advocates who regularly appear on newsroom shows can afford to have this type of audacity to state this truth so openly what the other lowly and average advocates talk all the time in privately amongst themselves in legal bars and libraries.

Such talk about corruption is not limited to advocates.

On January 12, 2012 a bench of Supreme Court publicly states that the faith of public in the judiciary is decreasing at an alarming rate which poses a serious threat to the constitutional and democratic governance.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 29, 2019 Wednesday

Bedtime Story 

The Third Branch of the Government

So was the case with Socrates who viewed democracy with great suspicion as it meant handing over the entire nation to the unruly masses most of them being poorly read, having very limited awareness of happenings around them and having an average (or perhaps even lower than that) intellectual and analytical prowess.

Finally when the constitution was framed the framers gave only a general outline of the judiciary saying that the federal judicial power would be vested in “one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

Thus in the constitution the exact powers and prerogatives of the Supreme Court was left undefined.

Even the system and organization of the judiciary which would be the “third branch” was very much left undefined leaving it for the Congress to create the system as and how required.

United States which has a federal system of government has both a federal Supreme Court which is called the Supreme Court of the United States and supreme court for each state such as the Supreme Court of Nevada.

While the state Supreme Court is fairly independent of the federal one but for the fact that the federal Constitution overrides everything else which includes the state laws.

This means that the state Supreme Court must take into account the federal Constitution and thereby the doctrine of stare decisis (Latin phrase which means, “Let the Decision Stand”) holds true visa-a-vis federal Supreme Court.

The precedent set by the federal Supreme Court through its decisions thus reigns supreme and necessarily becomes a precedent for all other courts of the land to follow.

It is definitely not so in India where the High Court and its benches in the state are the highest appellate courts of the state with only once central Supreme Court in the capital.     

Today in the United states the trial court for both civil and criminal cases are the district courts and the entire country for the purpose of federal judicial system has been divided into 94 federal judicial districts which do not obey the state boundaries particularly when it comes to a large state.

But each state and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have in them at least one federal judicial district.

For instance the state of California has four federal judicial districts that are called Northern, Eastern, Central and Southern and thereby a matter arising in San Francisco would be tried at the Northern federal district court and a legal dispute in Irvine would be triable at the Central federal district court.

It must be also told that Northern Federal District Court is not one but four holding trials in courts located at Eureka, Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.

Each court requires judges, clerks, and an array of supporting staff each well paid so that there is no rampant corruption that would vitiate the very essence of justice like so commonly happens in those of third-world countries where every public servant including the judges are highly and rather comfortably susceptible to the lure of bribes that sabotages their duties creating an environment of impunity in the minds of criminals.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 28, 2019 Tuesday

Bedtime Story 

Alexander Hamilton - Author of 51 of the 85 Essays of The Federalist Papers

James Madison ushered in some other key ideas regarding governance that he elaborated in The Federalist Papers.               

One significant change in the model of government introduced in the James Madison’s blueprint was the independence of the executive from the legislature which was neither natural nor obvious.

In fact prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 the executive of the states were duty bound to the legislature resulting in paralysis of the state governments.

An additional crucial point of the James Madison’s blueprint and that has direct bearing with our story at hand was his strong belief that a judiciary working under and appointed by the executive, as was the case in the states until then, would lead to corruption of the judiciary through patronage.

He believed that any direct link that could exist between the executive and judiciary had to be severed and for this a “third branch” of the government had to be created which would be the judiciary.

This was truly an original idea never ever before considered at least in the Western history.            

Of course, they all knew that no judiciary could be totally independent since someone had to appoint the judges and the consensus was reached that it would be the president that would choose the judges and it would be Senate who would ratify them.

Alexander Hamilton who was the delegate from New York made the following argument which gives a fair estimate of the intellectual prowess and thoughtfulness that these men carried in their heads.

They understood the importance or rather the dangers of laying too much powers on one side.

“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many.

The first are the rich and the well born, the other the mass of the people.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted, it is not true in fact.

The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.

Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government.

They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.  

Can a democratic assembly, who annually resolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

Their turbulent and uncontroling disposition requires check.”

You can see how mistrustful these men were in entrusting the entire governance directly to the masses of people without any control or checks.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 27, 2019 Monday

Bedtime Story 

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

…conciliation, are generally agreed that the System should be revised.

But they wish the revisal to be carried no farther than to supply additional guards for liberty.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on December 15, 1791 as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was also adopted on the same date as a part of the Bill of Rights and it is the one that protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

It is this amendment that till date is subjected to the greatest academic inquiry and is of utmost judicial interest and scrutiny because of the recurrent senseless mass shootings and gun-related deaths and injuries that plague the nation.

It is essentially around this Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and not the guns or gun-related deaths per se around which the entire debate regarding gun control and gun rights revolves.

The amendment that was ratified by the states and authenticated by the Secretary of State read as follows:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

It is simply a most obvious anachronism that comes from the experiences and social conditioning of an era of early English settlers in a new and remote land who needed arms for one of the several reasons listed below:

(1.) Owning and bearing arms allowed the band of settlers to organize their own local militia or protection force

(2.) Owning an bearing arms allowed the new settlers to participate directly in law enforcement

(3.) Owning and bearing arms protected and safeguarded small settlers against tyrannical local governments

(4.) Owning and bearing arms allowed to fight and repel invaders

(5.) Owning and bearing arms by the landholders and slave owners allowed them to suppress revolts of the slaves of the kind that occurred aboard La Amistad

(6.) Owning and bearing arms was the most fruitful way of ensuring self-defense

The conditions in today’s America could not be any more unalike from those times when the amendment was necessitated and yet since the amendment is enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights it is sacrosanct that no judiciary or government has been able to dodge around it no matter what the count of domestic gun killings is.    

So these amendments incorporated into the Constitution were a compromise made by the Founding Fathers to the fears of the anti-Federalists of bestowing almost divine-monarch like powers to the President of the Federal Government. 

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 26, 2019 Sunday

Bedtime Story 

The Anti-Federalists and the Bill of Rights 1791

The Anti-Federalists opposed handing over too much power to the President through the Constitution as that would make him no different from a Monarch of the kind James VI and James I proudly proclaimed of.

It was thanks to this opposition of theirs that the first ten amendments were made to the United States Constitution that today goes by the name of Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights over and above the Constitution adds to it specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations of government’s power with respect to the judiciary and declarations that any power that is not vested upon the Congress by the Constitution should be reserved for the states or the people. 

The United States Bills Of Rights are nothing but the first ten amendments made to the United States Constitution under the pressures and objections raised to by the Anti-Federalists. 

To some the anti-Federalists were unpatriotic but they themselves did not agree with this opinion calling themselves the true Federalists.

They feared that the Constitution and the Union thus being created was so highly centralized that it threatened the sovereignty of not just the individuals or localities but even the states.

In fact the greatest danger they saw in the form of government being proposed was the installation of new, centralized “monarchy” or “monarchic power” not very different from the recently fought and discarded tyranny of the Great Britain.      

The Anti-Federalists also believed that the republics that were the size of the individual states (of the United States) could survive, but that a republic that would be as large as that of the considered Union would collapse.

“Whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of United States, with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interests, morals, policies, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein can never form a perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity, for to these objects it must be directed: this unkindred legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be, like a house divided against itself.” 

Men like James Madison and Hamilton opposed the Bill of Rights on the ground that they considered the original un-amended Constitution sufficient and complete to guarantee sufficient freedom and rights to the citizens.

As time went by and as the idea of the Bill of rights was hotly debated with weaknesses or rather the overpowering strengths of the Constitution being pointed out Madison began to see the need for the Bill of Rights though he still considered it to be more useful rather than essential.

Finally he gave in and in a letter to Jefferson he wrote:

“The friends of the Constitution, some from an approbation of particular amendments, others from a spirit of…”

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

May 25, 2019 Saturday

Bedtime Story 

To Understand Democracy You must Deal with Monarchy

In those days of a very nascent United States there existed a group of people called the Anti-Federalists.

These men opposed the creation of a very strong U. S. federal government with the concern that the position of the President might eventually evolve into that of monarch since too much power was being vested upon one person.

You must remember that these were the times when European style of governments which essentially were absolute monarchies (in contrast to constitutional monarchies) was beginning to get looked down upon by the Founding Fathers of the United States – a nation yet to be born.

Most modern apes might find it surprising that until the dawn of twentieth century monarchies was the most common form of government and this is demonstrated by their presence even today - a sign of their lingering after effects.

As of today forty five nations have retained monarchs as their head of state even though they are largely ceremonial and constitutional.

This means that even though these monarchs are superior to the Average Joe they in truth wield no political clout and but for the luxurious life style and state-supported comforts are generally of no serious consequence.  

In contrast to this in much of the European history absolute monarchy was the norm who ruled on the basis of theological justification or by the doctrine of the divine right.

That word “divine” was a metonym for absolute power that would be subject to no earthly authority which translated into the king being completely free to do has he wished the will of the people over whom he ruled be damned.

Although it is believed that Europe imported the principle of doctrine of divine right from Russia it was James VI of Scotland who in his 1598 treatise “The True Law of Free Monarchies” codified and formalized this notion for Europe.

Lot of Biblical ideas and verses were used to justify his political and theological ideology of the Doctrine of Divine Right.

In a speech that he delivered to the Parliament in 1610 as James I of England (1603 marked the year of union of Scottish and English crowns along with Ireland) he greatly praised the virtues of the monarch who was blessed with divine powers:

“The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods.

There be three principal [comparisons] that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God, and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy.

In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the Divine power.

Kings are also compared to fathers of families; for a king is truly parens patriae [parent of the country], the politic father of the people.     

And lastly, Kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.”

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg