EDITORIAL: Is justice served when it is blind?

A lot has been said about the difficulties with which the Cyprus courts are called to expedite their work, primarily due to the lack of funds that prevent efficient means of administration and technical work.

It would be unfair to blame everything that goes wrong in our court rooms on the pool of efficient, yet “low tech” stenographers who are obliged by law to take down all the proceedings in longhand. Neither can the blaring noise of honking taxis and loud policemen diverting traffic away from the congested parking spaces around the courts take the brunt of the ills of the legal system.

When matters of urgency are heard or even tried in a matter of weeks if not days, there is no excuse for the courts to allow for cases to drag on filling up judges’ schedules several months ahead, often into the next year.

But judges are also often duped into the trickery of a number of lawyers who claim a number of colourful excuses in order not to appear in court or postpone a hearing, with some of these tall stories ranging from “my cat got run over” to the more extreme “I was involved in a car accident”. Some of these stories are believable but no one bothers to check whether the lawyer in question actually drove a car that day, let alone own one.

Thus, a number of respected lawyers have spotted many weaknesses in the system and are known to try to manipulate the outcome of a case by determining which days are unsuitable for the lawyers of the other side or even “select” the candidates for an appeals court panel of judges to suit their interests by pre-determining dates for hearings.

Such obstacles were supposedly resolved when the Supreme Court in Nicosia moved to new, modern and functioning premises and theoretically, at least, cases referred to the Court of Appeals should be facilitated with efficiency.

However, it would seem that there still remains the issue of overcoming the mentalities of a number of judges when passing judgment.

True, “Justice is blind” and all court arguments should be based on facts and hard evidence as it is up to the attorneys of both sides to prove their case.

On the other hand, who is to say that “justice is served” when it is expected of the judges to consider the grey areas between the black and white of the lawyers’ arguments, yet the bench does not take the greater interest of the wider community into consideration?