INTERPRETATION OF LAW

India have tons and tons of law in its kitty. All these are the by-products of our constitution. Many features of our constitution are taken from Britain, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, USSR, France, Germany, South Africa and Japan. The Indian constitution has a preamble and 470 articles, which are grouped into 25 parts, with 12 schedules and 5 appendices and has amended 104 times so far. It has 1,17,369 words in English language. There are 672 District courts and 25 High courts in India. The total number of judges sanctioned in the high court's are 1079. The Supreme Court has one Chief Justice and 30 other judges. According to Bar Council of India there are about 20 lakh advocates in the country. The chief function of the court is to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in accordance with the rule of law. This is the basic network of our law and justice.

The oral arguments in a court are spoken presentation to a judge by a lawyer of the legal reasons why they should prevail. While every citizen is eligible for the fundamental rights provided in the constitution one may not have awareness of it. Here comes the lawyer to help the person to attain those which he cannot get otherwise. However, what we find in the court is interpretation of law. When something is plainly said to someone he can either adhere to or refuse it but cannot do something else in its place. In the observance of law such things happen in our country. However, most of our disputes or offences are directed towards a point where law needs interpretation. Generally the law of India is beyond the grasp of common man. Someone is always needed to help him to understand it. Most of the people involved in writing the law have somehow made it complicated and confusing for many of the readers. As many hard words and phrases available in English language are tried to insert in our law books. For not enough good amount of words and phrases are imported from Latin, French etc to our law books. The following Latin words can be freely found in our law books. 

De facto (in fact), Sui juris (someone who can enter into a contract without any restriction), Per se (in itself), Per quod (in accordance with), Ab initio (from the start of something), ad hoc (for a particular purpose), Pari passu (equally), Bona vacant (goods or estate belonging to nobody) and such many Latin words are plenty in our law books. Further to these there are also a good number of French words and phrases like:  Le Delit (crime), La Preuve (proof),  Le Proces (trial), Un Agresseur (assailant) D'Identite (Identification) etc can also be found in Indian law books. The Delhi High Court on Nov 25, 2019 in the case of Vishalakshi Giri v. Union of India has directed the Delhi police to lodge FIRs in the simplest language possible and to refrain from mechanically using Urdu/Persian words. The reason for this warning by the court may be due to the use of unfamiliar words. Urdu/Persian words are also inserted by Indian law writers. Charge (fard jurm), Certified copy (mussadaqa nawal), Criminal (faujdarri) etc. can be found in our law books.

Normally one may find in a court room that the lawyer of the plaintiff argues that the defendant have not observed the concerned provisions of the law. The defendant in reply may define the law and try to establish that they have strictly adhered to the same. Now, it is the judge to conduct the autopsy of the relevant law to establish who has adhered to and not. It must be the complicated expression of Indian law that causes many disputes and also causes more time for settlement. It may not be right to attribute this to any incapability of the English language but the writers' thrill to make the writing more complex.

Comparatively French language is found  better for law writing. French is said to be the language of diplomacy, German the language of science and English the language of trade. Use of French is protected by its designation as of the two working languages of the UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and ad hoc Un- backed tribunals. It is not proposed here to write the Indian law in French language but to bring to that level of simplicity and to avoid multiple meanings.

Government of India may, therefore, appoint a commission for in depth study of various important law books and to suggest methods for simplification of law which can be easily grasped by the common man and which holds lowest possible meanings and avoid diverse interpretations.

KV George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com