"Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but
old and new wisdom mix admirably." ~ Bertolt Brecht
I recently heard a very interesting anecdote.
Imagine a person from the 19th century descending on the world on this very
day. Imagine how she will feel about the state of our society! She might be
shell shocked at the number of changes the society has gone through since the 1900s
and how technology has created a humongous revolution in human lives! After a
long day of going from one cultural shock to another, she will then enter a
courtroom. Oh what a relief - finally, somewhere in the world, the things will
be exactly as she saw them in the era of the 1900s!
This may sound funny but unfortunately, this is
the sad reality of the world today. The last few decades have brought momentous
transformations in the human civilization: the way we communicate, the way we
live and how we conduct our business - in fact, even our thinking patterns -
everything has undergone massive shifts. However, very little has changed in
the way we conduct our legal affairs. The legal language still has the Latin
phrases which most people hardly understand, the legal community still observes
age-old customs and formalities (for example, to get the license to practice in
England, one of the requirements is to eat a certain number of formal dinners)
and in some parts of the world, the judges still wear the wigs!!
In India, for instance, the courts observe long
summer vacations as per the norms of the British colonial rule, the lawyers
wear the gowns, the purpose of which appeals little to the rationality and even
some of our laws are still the ones that applied to the society of the 1800s!
"There is a strong requirement for
simplifying laws that affect us and how we make use of them."The laws are
supposed to be for the people and their essential purpose is to set norms and
bring order to make our lives better. The laws have to constantly evolve and
adjust to the changing structure of the society and its people. Sadly, we have
created a situation where no one other than that judges and a handful of
lawyers are able to understand and derive any meaning from these laws. The
legal language is far removed from the language, we use in our daily lives. And
ironically, in the age where people prefer to communicate in 140 characters or
less, our laws are so verbose that they can be accommodated only in extremely
thick books which have intimidated law students for generations. People
throughout geographies increasingly have access to technology - to the internet and
mobile phones - but ironically they do not have easy access to justice.
We live in a fast-changing world that is
largely online and getting online - a world where everything starting from our
banking to our travel itinerary to our shopping happens online.
"People throughout geographies increasingly
have access to technology - to internet and mobile phones - but ironically they
do not have easy access to justice. "
The legal systems today are ripe for disruption
- for fundamental alterations in the way we understand laws and their impact on
our lives. New innovations in the legal arena are taking place only in a handful of countries but there is a need for innovations in the legal processes
across geographies.
This will have to be done with care. While we
need to preserve the centuries-old legal heritage and the nuances acquired over
ages, the system, and our laws will still have to be made relevant and effective
for our lives today. This will have to be done in such a way that when our a friend from the 19th century might find the legal systems fascinatingly different
next time she decides to visit us; even in the 2100s, our next generation would be
able to sense the creatively cultivated sense of legal legacy - just like the
inherent essence of human nature.
