The 5 Page Judgment

Keep judgments simple, judges told:

"The nation's top judge has called on his subordinates, especially trial judges, to provide simple and short written grounds.

Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi said their judgments could be between five and 10 pages instead of 50 to 100 pages."

It is true that Judges tend to fill up a lot of pages:

[1] reciting the relevant facts/ pleadings of both parties and quoting witnesses' testimony given at trial;

[2] repeating the submissions of both parties, in order to explain why certain arguments are accepted and others rejected;

[3] repeating the brief facts and grounds of judgments of case authorities to show why they are or are not applicable.

All this before getting to the crux of the matter and delivering their Judgments on the peculiar facts and circumstances of this case!

Shorn of all the earlier parts (facts, pleadings, evidence, submissions and authorities), a Judgment may well be reduced to 5 pages or so.

But the trade-off is significant. I fear such Judgments-in-abstract would be difficult to comprehend for outsiders unfamiliar with the case. 

To me, these parts should not be cut out as a compromise. They do not need to be.

With the leaps and bounds taken in technology, especially in the Courts today, everything I described above is one mere click away. To wit:

The Court file contains soft copies of the parties' pleadings.

The oral and documentary evidence can be read from the notes of proceedings --transcribed in real time-- and the bundles of documents.

The submissions of both parties and the cases each side relies upon are now uploaded as PDF files through the Court's e-filing portal.

In other words, this is not a pie-in-the-sky dream I'm suggesting. The technology and the database exists. The future is now.

A Judgment can be published in the Court's website with links to all the background materials.

With full transparency, Justice would be well-served.