The long and the short of judgments

The Supreme Court is set to deliver crucial decisions but it should avoid past pitfalls

The question whether the mills of justice must grind slowly and exceedingly well, as the saying goes, or aim at swift decisions, is a matter of interminable debate. When the British Supreme Court gave a 20-page decision against their Prime Minister last month after a three-day hearing, some held it out as a model for our courts which grate petitioners for decades. The issue before that court was comparatively simple though of high political consequence. Our Supreme Court has before it a batch of appeals and writ petitions which involve history, archaeology, religion, politics, and 20,000 pages of documents in