“The Constitution embodies various principles of justice such as equality, liberty, and fraternity and these principles must be used to craft argument to promote justice and help the powerless to achieve equality,” former Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU, Bengaluru, Mohan Gopal has said.
He was delivering the Justice R.G. Desai Endowment Lecture on ‘The Constitutional Vision of Justice’, organised by the Karnataka State Law University in Hubballi on Saturday.
Prof. Mohan Gopal, who is also former Director of NJASC, said that justice could be expressed in two ways: approach of the Supreme Court towards the idea of justice and the constitutional vision of justice.
“When it comes to approach of judiciary towards justice, there is no clear consensus as the judiciary is yet to evolve a clear workable operational idea of justice. However, the judiciary has developed discrete regimes of justice such as guidelines on Prevention of Sexual Harassment against Women at Workplace in Vishaka’s Judgement and other series of cases on environmental aspects, wherein the Supreme Court has evolved various principles for the protection of those aspects. This in-turn contributes towards standard human conduct providing further clarity as to what is right and what is wrong,” he said.
Elaborating on the constitutional idea of justice, he said that social justice was the ideal form of justice, wherein the powerless people, who do not have the capacity to satisfy their needs, should be brought on par with powerful people and enable them to fulfil their needs.
Senior advocate of Supreme Court Mohan V. Katarki spoke on the idea of justice by giving the example of dispute relating to river water sharing. Whenever there was a conflict, justice should be made on the basis of priorities.
Presiding over the function, Dean of KSLU G.B. Patil said that there was docket explosion as well as docket exclusion and therefore, it was the responsibility of the law students to contribute towards the justice system by opting for the legal profession.
