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Lords are judges after all

Blame it on Henry II, if you must. It was England's first Plantagenet King who prepared the ground for the common law system that replaced the practice of justice being dispensed on the basis of disparate customs by feudal and county courts. While his bold reforms in the 12th century led to the creation of a strong and unified legal framework, the citizenry was expected to treat judges as if they were nobility and address them with titles such as "Milord" and "Your Lordship." Old habits are notoriously hard to break, but it has taken India almost a millennium to dispense with the use of such archaic and feudal forms when addressing judges. The Bar Council of India's recommendation that Supreme Court and High Court judges may now be called "Your Honour" and that those in lower courts may be addressed as "Sir" (or its equivalent in Indian languages) paves the way for an usage that is not only contemporary but one that is in keeping with the Republican character of the state. The Bar Council was prompted to look into this after the Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition, filed by a forum of lawyers, that urged doing away with phrases such as "Your Lordship" on the ground that such expressions were "relics of the colonial past" and "smacked of slavery in Independent India." At the same time, the apex body graciously lobbed the ball back into the court of the Bar Council, saying the issue of how the judges should be addressed as "is up to the collective wisdom of the lawyers." The message: you call us what you think fit.

The portentous honorific "Lordship" is not much in judicial fashion nowadays. Senior judges in Britain — which has possibly invented more pompous titles than any other country — continue to be known as "Lords." But in many Commonwealth countries (including Australia and Canada), the relatively unfussy "Your Honour" is the appropriate appellation. In 1995, South Africa went further by doing away with both "My Lord" and "Your Honour"; lawyers were directed to restrict themselves to using "Mr. Justice." Of course, in the United States, a country that has woven a certain informality into its professional life, a judge has always been what he or she is: a judge. Archaic titles and honorifics are used outside the judiciary as well. In India, the Mayors of cities continue to be addressed as "Worshipful Mayors" — an expression that reeks of feudalism and class privilege. While such titles exercise a strange fascination over people, it takes more than a mere honorific — to state the obvious — to earn the respect of others. "When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity," wrote Thomas Paine. "The Honorable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honorable murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a monster rather than a man."

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