Judicial System and Public Policy: Strategy for Expeditious Disposal of Backlog

Abstract

This study aims to identify the causes of delayed justice in Karachi district courts and analyse the critical causes of delay that the Pakistani judicial and legal system is confronting daily. Article 37 (d) of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan emphasise speedy, expeditious and inexpensive justice. World Justice Project Rule of Law Index has ranked Pakistan 130 out of 139 countries on various parameters, including civil and criminal courts. This research makes a comprehensive analysis of civil and criminal litigation in Pakistan for delay reduction. Unfortunately, less has been done previously in Pakistan and especially equal to none of quantitative. This research will focus on the quantitative aspect regarding the rule of law. Moreover, this study used factor analysis to identify the top contributing factors that cause subordinate courts delays. The linear regression model is used to determine and test the directions of the independent variables. This research measures significance of these factors to reject the null hypothesis at a 5% interval level. Similarly, linear regression is used for the cost of litigation to identify the relationship between independent and dependent variables, which is the ”cost of each hearing”. The results show that unnecessary adjournments on frivolous grounds are the most contributing factor of the delayed justice and filing of the miscellaneous applications on frivolous grounds, lack of skills and standardised level of training of both advocates as well as learned judges.