What the next reader needs
Heritage weekend will produce arrests, protection-order returns and a dark court or two. The next reader — a colleague on Monday, a High Court in six months — still needs the facts you found and the path you took. A ruling written in a hurry on Friday afternoon is how a long weekend becomes a personality dispute. Write as if the person who lost will read it first. Then write as if a colleague on circuit will have to follow it without telephoning you. A short judgment that can be followed is a better judicial act than a long one that cannot.
A working method for the reserved page
• Facts first, in the order they happened, not in the order they irritated you.
• Name the section. A feeling about fairness is not a substitute for section 35, or section 60, or section 15 of the Maintenance Act.
• Deal with the losing argument in a paragraph that the loser can recognise. That is courtesy, and it is also good proofreading.
• Dates, amounts, exhibit numbers. Particularity is kindness to your future self.
• If you reserved, give a date on which the reasons will be delivered, and keep it.
A working pen, a candle, a generator — and a portal that may not open at 16:00.
When the lights go — the electronic roll
An electronic bundle is a blessing when it works. It is also a new way of losing a page. If the only copy of an annexure is on a laptop that cannot charge, the litigant has not been heard. The Rules still assume paper unless a practice directive says otherwise. Directives help. They do not switch the lights back on. Virtual appearances, used well, spare a rural witness a six-hour taxi. Used badly, they become a hearing in which nobody can see the complainant's face. Load-shedding, water outages and a court that cannot print an order by 16:00 are section 34 issues, and they are section 165(4) issues. Organs of state must assist the courts. A working generator is assistance. A circular about resilience is not.
• Keep a paper list of the morning's orders. The system will not always reprint them.
• If a witness is on a screen, say so on the record, and say whether you could see and hear them.
• Do not punish a litigant for a portal that the court itself cannot open. Adjourn with a date, not with a hope.
• Tell the senior. A dark court that nobody reports is a dark court that stays dark.
A note from Neelan Karikan. Reasons are how authority explains itself to the person who lost. If they cannot be followed, they were only power wearing a better font. A circular about resilience has never taken a plea.