More resident judges, better law records needed – Ramodibedi |24 May 2005
Justice Ramodibedi was speaking after the Seychelles Court of Appeal dealt with some 18 cases Friday May 20 in what was termed a “historic” session for the appeals court, which for the first time sat in its own building away from the Supreme Court.
But the judge said there was a “pressing need” to appoint more resident justices of appeal for the “smooth and effective running of the court,” referring to the backlog of appeal cases the court had inherited in 2004.
Efforts to clear the backlog even required the use of Supreme Court judges as ex-officio justices of appeal. Friday’s sitting allowed the court to bring down the original backlog from 37 cases to just six, but a surge in the number of new appeals since Justice Ramodibedi’s arrival leaves the total number of pending cases at 31.
“All of this goes to show that any suggestion that the volume of work in the Court of Appeal is negligible is grossly incorrect,” he said.
During Friday’s session, Justice Ramodibedi and Justice Jacques Hodoul sat without the remaining member of the required three-member quorum, Justice Steven Bwana, who is a non-resident judge based in Tanzania.
Justice Ramodibedi on Friday also called for vast improvements to be made the library at the Supreme Court.
Statutes, law reports and law books were “the tools of trade for legal practitioners and judicial officers,” he said, and the library was so poorly stocked and contained such outdated materials “that it offers little assistance to the researcher.”
“The situation is aggravated by the fact that no law reports have been produced in this country for more than 15 years now,” he said. “In these circumstances it becomes almost impossible to know what the other judges have decided on any one issue. This situation is in turn bound to affect the quality of judgments delivered by the courts and therefore requires to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
The next session of the Court of Appeal is scheduled for November.