Retired SA judge warns against delayed justice

A FAILURE to deliver an outstanding judgement in good time is as much an abuse by a judge as beating a spouse would be, a retired South African Constitutional Court judge said in Windhoek on Friday.

Retired Judge Johann Kriegler made the hard-hitting remark when he addressed a meeting of the Law Society of Namibia, which has tried – but failed – to get the Judicial Service Commission to take disciplinary action against Judges of Namibia’s High Court and Supreme Court in connection with long delays in delivering reserved judgements.A failure by a judge to deliver judgements timeously is not a matter for disciplinary steps to be taken over, but for the judge involved it should be a matter of self-respect, Kriegler remarked.’It’s as much an abuse as beating your wife,’ Kriegler said about judgements that remain outstanding for long, leaving parties in a case suspended in limbo as they wait – sometimes even for years – for justice to be done in their matter.Sometimes delayed justice is no justice at all, Kriegler said.He took his point further: ‘A bad judgement is better than no judgement. A biased judgement is better than no judgement. Even a corrupt judgement is better than no judgement, because it can be taken on appeal and remedied.’Kriegler served as a Constitutional Court Judge in South Africa from 1994 to 2002, as a Judge of Appeal in South Africa’s Appellate Division before that, and as a Judge in the former Transvaal Provincial Division from 1984 to 1993. Speaking from own experience, he said: ‘I know what a curse it is to have a reserved judgement go stale on you.’Not only do reserved judgements that get delayed and moved to the far corners of a judge’s desk not get done, but they also get worse as time passes, he said. Left on its own, a reserved judgement grows, festers, and becomes more difficult, he said.Long delays in delivering judgements are not a uniquely Namibian predicament, and this is not a modern phenomenon either, Kriegler said: ‘The mischief of delayed judgements has been with us for centuries, and it is universal.’Just like the problem is not peculiar to Namibia, a solution to this problem is also universally elusive, though, he said.For judges, the principle should be simple, Kriegler indicated. He said: ‘If you want to do your job properly, you have to do your job promptly.’While the law in Namibia does not provide for disciplinary steps to be taken against judges over long delays in delivering outstanding judgements, they definitely face a moral sanction, requiring them to do their job conscientiously and speedily, he said.Under the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, which is a universal code of conduct for judicial officers, judges are required to perform all their judicial duties, including the delivery of reserved judgements, ‘efficiently, fairly and with reasonable promptness’, Kriegler pointed out.The Bangalore Principles also state: ‘The judicial duties of a judge take precedence over all other activities.’It should also be remembered, though, that when someone becomes a judge he or she does not also become a saint, Kriegler said. Judges have the same human failings as other people, and it is human fallibility that in the end underlies the problem of judgements that remain outstanding for too long, he said.Nobody expects judges to be infallible, but everybody expects them to do their job properly, Kriegler said.On Namibia’s problem with outstanding judgements he suggested that the legal profession and the country’s judges should get together to have a frank discussion about where the problem lies and to examine ways to dealt with it.If the legal profession and the judiciary do not themselves take measures to address this problem, they might yet find that others decide to do it for them, for example by passing a law setting out steps that can be taken against judges over unduly delayed judgements.That, however, would not be a solution, but could even make things worse, Kriegler said. It would be like shooting a sick cow to treat its illness, he commented.