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30 Ateneo L.J. 11 (1986)

handle is hein.journals/ateno30 and id is 1 raw text is: 




MISSIONS OF
JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION
IN  ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Ricardo C. Puno *

   Delivered as key-note address in the LA WASIA Conference of Chief Justices (August
   19-23) in Penang, Marysia.

                           CAUSES   OF  CONCERN
     According  to the guidelines formulated long ago by an eminent American
jurist,' the general causes of concern and satisfaction with the administration of
justice are grouped under four (4) categories: (1) the causes for dissatisfaction
with  any  legal system; (2) causes arising from the pecularities of particular
legal systems;  (3) causes arising from the particular judicial organization and
procedure  of any given country, and  (4) causes arising from the environment
of the particular judicial administration adopted.
     Common to all legal systems are two precise causes for dissatisfaction,
 namely,   (1) the necessarily mechanical operation of rules and therefore of
 laws, and  (2) the somewhat  inevitable difference in rate of progress between
 law and public opinion.
     One   of the necessary consequences  of the mechanical operation of legal
 rules is uniformity. The pendulum has continued to swing since time immemo-
 rial from wide judicial discretion on the one hand and strict adherence by the
 judge to the rules upon the other hand.  The problem  has always been how to
 strike the correct balance. Too  much  discretion results in uncertainty. And
 too much   rule may  result in unreasonable inflexibility. The striking of the
 correct balance is the conern as well as the function of judicial administration.
      Legal history has  demonstrated  that problems  arise from the discrepant
 time tables in the evolution and progress of law and public opinion. The ideal
 situation is that law -houid mirror the sentiments and conscience of the com-
 munity  and  shduld fomiulate rules to which  the operation of tribunals must
 accordingly conform.  That  ideal situation would preclude corruption, exclude
 personal prejudices of  judges and  minimize  individual incompetence.   But
 these rules, being formulations of  public opinion cannot  exist until public
 opinion has become   fixed and settled. Neither can these rules be altered until
 a change  of public opinion has become  stable and complete. But  the process
 of evolution is -slow and gradual, and the law usually lags several steps behind.
 This same  jurist thus observed that law is often in very truth a government of
 the living by the dead.  Indeed, very often, the law does not respond quickly
 to new  conditions and does not change until undesirable effects are evident and
 already felt acutely.


 Former Minister of Justice of the Republic of the Philippines
                                       11


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