Editorial
Bench-Bar relations
Civility must be maintained
Recently retired Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque declined to accept a formal farewell from the Supreme Court Bar Association on the eve of his going into retirement. Obviously, he was miffed by the fact that during his tenure as head of the nation's highest judiciary he faced constant resistance from the SCBA, whose leading figures could not or would not agree with some important legal decisions reached by the Supreme Court under Justice Haque's stewardship. Also a faction of the SCBA led by its president made it known that they would not attend the reception accorded to the newly appointed CJ Mohammad Mozammel Hossain.
To the nation's great discomfiture, and whether or not anyone acknowledges this fact, a certain degree of politics or a reflection of it has contributed to this unsavoury situation. It has been observed that while lawyers with a pro-government bias have generally been friendly toward incoming or outgoing judges, those identifying with the political opposition have usually refrained from cooperating with the judges. Such a situation has been more or less common during the tenure of various governments and not just the present one. Our question is: should the time-honoured tradition of lawyers showing respect, despite their professional or political perceptions of how the judiciary may have performed, to judges be undermined in this manner?
The truth must not be lost on anyone that at this point of time, Bangladesh's judiciary remains one institution the nation can turn to where showing a path out of the woods on critical issues is concerned. The role played by the higher judiciary in dispensing with some amendments undermining the constitution and even the state is to be appreciated. Much as some lawyers may not agree with those moves, we believe that it is important to keep alive and aloft certain traditions of respect and civility which have consistently helped people to keep faith with the legal profession and the judiciary. Some conventions cannot simply be pushed aside.
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