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‘I too feel sleepy on the Bench’: Justice Salam
View(s):“What do you do if you feel sleepy on the Bench?” Appeals Court Judge Justice A.W.A Salam quizzed members of the Judicial Service Association yesterday. Justice Salam spoke on the independence of the judiciary at the Annual Judges Conference in Colombo. The audience chuckled as Justice Salam said, a litigant who sees a judge asleep on the Bench may regret having wasted his money on a lawyer, “since nothing was going into the judge’s head”.
The litigant would wonder, “how will this man give a judgment, having slept all the while?” “I also sometimes feel sleepy,” he confessed, smiling. “I have my own way of doing it. When I’m quite alert, I just close my eyes and wait. Suddenly, I open my eyes and, to show that I had followed everything while my eyes were closed, I ask him a question! So even if I fall asleep, he thinks I’m pretending to be asleep!”
When the laughter subsided, Justice Salam said: “As a matter of fact, when you are sleepy, you must not hear the case. We have heard from lawyers that, when judges used to sleep, they can’t disturb them.” He recounted how one lawyer would take two or three books into court and drop them on the ground to wake up a judge. He admitted that judges could fall asleep unintentionally, and for a few minutes.
“But I’m stressing to you that you must be attentive,” he advised. “Always show people that you are anxiously following the cases. Then only will there be confidence in whatever judgment you give. Otherwise, he (litigant) will say, ‘He gave judgment against me because, when my counsel was speaking, he was sleeping’!”
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