Can genes be patented?

Can genes be patented? US SC is facing this question. To read an article about this go to the following link:
http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/934597

Punjab & Haryana HC to go paperless

To read an article on how e-filing will result in Punjab & haryana HC going paperless go to the following link:

http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/934575

Time bound Justice for Citizens

Source: Hindustan Times dated 18.3.2013
 
Sitting on a litigation time bomb

The day the Justice JS Verma Committee submitted its report to the government, recommending several amendments to the criminal law to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for those accused of committing sexual crimes, a gang rape victim tried to commit suicide in a Gujarat court because her case, which has been going on since 2007, was adjourned again on that day.

“I am tired of [court] dates. I don’t want to live anymore,” the 30-year-old said after consuming poison. Like hers, there are over three crore cases pending in the country’s various courts.

At the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Bar Council of India (BCI) on February 16, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged the legal fraternity to find ways and means to tackle this problem.

But what the PM did not say is this: India is facing a litigation explosion and things could go out of control if time-bound measures are not taken now.

In fact, judicial delay is pushing people to try out other routes like vigilante justice. At the end of 2012, there were 59,816 cases pending in the Supreme Court, while the number of cases awaiting adjudication in the country’s 21 high courts and about 17,000 subordinate courts are 43.27 lakh and 2.69 crore respectively (December 2011). These figures do not include lakhs of cases pending in consumer courts and tribunals.

India has one of the world’s largest judicial systems and it has expanded in the last three decades.
According to the National Court Management System Policy (NCMSP) and Action Plan released in 2012, the number of judges rose six-fold while the number of cases increased 12-fold in the last 30 years.
As India’s literacy rate and per capita income rise, the NCMSP estimates, in the next three decades, the number of new cases filed per thousand population will increase from the current rate of about 15 (up from roughly around three cases per thousand cases three decades ago) to about 75 cases. By that time, India’s population would touch 150 crore. This means that by then about 15 crore cases would be filed each year.

The US, Canada and Britain have 107, 75 and 50 judges per 10 lakh population respectively.

It has been over 25 years since the Law Commission recommended that the judge-population ratio in India must be increased from 10.5 to 50 judges per 10 lakh population.

In March 2002, the SC ordered that the judge strength should be increased to 50 judges per 10 lakh people in a phased manner by 2007. But the situation has remained unchanged. To raise the present ratio to 50 judges per 10 lakh population for 150 crore population, India will need 75,000 judges.

Forget about increasing the number of judges, even the existing vacancies have not been filled.
Almost 30% of the 895 sanctioned posts of high court judges are vacant while over 20% of the total sanctioned posts of subordinate court judges await appointments.

The worst situation is in the Allahabad high court where (as on March 31, 2012), 85 of the 160 judges’ posts were vacant.There are four vacancies in the SC. Don’t blame the government for these vacancies; the SC collegium system is not functioning properly and the high courts are not doing enough to fill the vacancies in subordinate courts.

The NCMSP has also proposed a National Framework of Court Excellence (NFCE) that will set measurable performance standards for courts, addressing issues of quality, responsiveness and timeliness.
All these reforms need funds but we spend very little on the judicial system. In 2013-14, the ministry of law and justice received Rs. 1,815 crore out of the total budget outlay of Rs. 16,65,297 crore — that is Rs. 1 in every Rs.1,000 the Centre will spend over the next year.

To clear the backlog, the government and the judiciary have taken some steps like releasing undertrials languishing in jails on petty charges and using alternative disputes resolution mechanisms like mediation, conciliation and arbitration.

But this is only a part of the solution, not the long-term solution. The issue of judicial reforms may not be very attractive for political parties since it does not fetch votes.

But they must build a political consensus to ensure quick and affordable justice to citizens, particularly the poor. Otherwise, justice delayed will be seen as justice denied.

Re-examination of cases disposed by the Juvenile Justice Board

Source: DNA dated 18.3.2013 Re-examine 132 juvenile cases: HC

Urvi Mahajani

Displeased with the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in Pune, the Bombay high court has directed the principal district judge to re-examine the 132 cases which the JJB disposed of in one working day on September 16, 2012. Justice Abhay Oka observed: “How so many cases that require application of mind and require reasoned orders to be passed could have been disposed of on a single day is a question which needs to be seriously inquired into.” The HC further said that if it is physically impossible for principal district judge to scrutinise all the files, then he should depute any other district judge to visit the office of the JJB for the same. The HC has sought a report from the principal district judge, Pune, by the first week of July. The direction was given while hearing an appeal filed by a juvenile who was arrested in a murder case in April 1988. The principal district and sessions judge, Pune, submitted a report stating that a Maha Lok Adalat was held on September 16, 2012, in which 1,833 out of 1,848 cases were disposed of. Of these, 133 cases were disposed of as the juvenile pleaded guilty and in the remaining 1,700 cases, orders of closure were passed. The HC asked for the re-examination of the cases as it would be unjust to consider the case of only one juvenile.

Central Government's E-Court Project

Source: The Times of India dated 18.3.2013

Opposition-ruled states have done better in meeting the target of computerization of subordinate courts, a project initiated by the Centre to ensure speedy justice delivery. Among eight states to have achieved 100% computerization of their targeted lower courts, five are ruled by opposition parties.
    NDA-ruled states such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab are ahead with each having converted between 600 and 1,000 of their subordinate courts into e-courts which comprises installation of computer hardware, local area network, application software and provision for internet connectivity and video-conferencing.
    Under the Centre’s e-courts initiative, infrastructure in high courts will also be upgraded. So far, video conferencing facility for hearing of witnesses and accused have begun only in five HCs — Rajasthan, Calcutta, J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Gauhati. For district court complexes, video conferencing facility has been approved for 500 courts on a pilot basis.
    The e-courts will help judges take home case files in pen drives to read them rather than taking physical files. Already, e-courts have become a reality in Delhi where undertrials need not be brought to the courtroom or judges need not be face-toface with advocates and the accused to hear a case.
    For the purpose of making e-payments of court fees, laws have already been amended in Mumbai and Delhi while the Centre is making similar move so that it applies to all courts in central government jurisdiction and those in the union territories.
    Attempts are also being made by the Centre to rationalize the work allocation of law officers to bring in more efficiency in the system and bring down pendency of cases.

Use of social media by Courts

To read an article on the use of Skype for producing accused in Court in the Indian Express dated 6.3.2013, copy and paste the following link in your browser:

http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/849846

Mother of surrogate child entitled to maternity leave

Source: The Times of India dated 6th March 2013
Article by A Subramani 

CHENNAI: If parents who adopt a child are entitled to child care leave, why not those who have a child through surrogacy? Raising a toast to surrogate parenthood, the Madras high court on Tuesday held that government employees opting for children through surrogacy too would be entitled to 'maternity leave' in the form of 'child care leave'.

Justice K Chandru, passing orders on a petition filed by a Chennai Port Trust officer, who was denied child care leave after she had a child through surrogacy, said: "If law can provide child care leave in case of adoptive parents, then it should also apply to parents who obtained a child through a surrogate agreement. The object of such a leave is to take care of the child and develop a good bond between the child and the parents."

Rejecting the port trust's attempts to raise "moral, ethical and religious" issues involved in surrogate parenthood, Justice Chandru said: "This court does not find anything immoral and unethical about the woman officer having obtained a child through surrogate arrangement."

The object of such a leave is to take care of the child, and develop a good bond between the child and the parents.

Comprehensive legislation on surrogacy need of the hour, says Madras high court

He said, "For all practical purposes, she is the mother of the girl child and her husband is the father. Once it is admitted that the minor child is the daughter of the officer, she is entitled to leave like %those who are granted leave as per Rule 3-A of the Madras Port Trust (Leave) Regulations, 1987. The purpose of the rule is ensure proper bonding between the child and the parents."

The matter relates to a senior port trust officer, whose 20-year-old son died in a road accident in 2009. As her uterus had been removed in 2008, she and her husband approached a Chennai hospital to have a baby through surrogacy. A baby girl was born in February 2011 through a surrogate mother. In order to look after the child, she applied for maternity leave (post-delivery) and also sought reimbursement of medical expenses. As a third request, she wanted family insurance cover for the child. Though the authorities granted her two months' leave initially as a special case, it was cancelled later. They also rejected her two other requests. She then moved the HC seeking maternity leave, reimbursement of medical expenses and insurance cover for her child.

In its counter-affidavit, the port trust said, "Apart from legal, other issues such as moral, ethical, psychological and religious are involved in surrogacy procedure. Hence, in India, a comprehensive legislation is very much the need of the hour to address the complex legal issues related to surrogacy." The officer's counsel Srinath Sridevan, however, cited several international covenants, United Nations resolutions and judgments from foreign courts, and said a mother and a minor girl child were entitled to develop a bond between them. He said if existing maternity leave rules do not provide for such a leave, the rules should be interpreted to the benefit of parents who get children through surrogacy.

The judge accepted the officer's plea for leave and insurance cover for the child, but rejected her request for reimbursement of medical expenses, saying there was no specific legal provision for that.  

Alternative Search Tools: These options to Google will help students become better researchers

Source | http://www.thedigitalshift.com/

Pose a research question to students and most of them will immediately turn to the Internet. Sadly, many students think the only option is Google. Some of our students who have spent a lot of time in the library may try a database like CQ Researcher or ABC-CLIO, but those services require a login to use them. And that can be an obstacle to adoption by students. Here I’ll present some free options for research that don’t require a login, along with a few quick tips to aid student searches.

Every year, several kids will spend 10 minutes on a Web search and say, “Google has nothing on this.” My first response to them is “did you open the links or just read the snippet in the search results page?” If the answer’s no, I send them back to access the links and search within those pages. To help them determine if a page contains what they’re looking for, I teach my students to use “command + F” on a Mac keyboard and “control + F” on Windows. Those shortcuts enable students to search within the contents of a page for a key term or phrase.

Ref Seek (refseek.com) is a search engine whose intention is to only serve links that have potential academic use. Ref Seek seems to eliminate the advertising and paid links found on Google, Ask, Yahoo, and other commercial search tools. To discern the advantage of Ref Seek over a generic Google search, you need to look below the top returns. As you compare search results between the two, you’ll find that the second and third pages of results on Ref Seek will contain more academic resources than you’d typically find in a generic Google search. Students can then sort Ref Seek results into “links only” or “documents only” views.

Yolink (yolink.com) quietly powers the search boxes found on many websites today. Yolink’s technology is included in Sweet Search (sweetsearch.com), a popular tool among teachers, which was profiled in January 2012. But Yolink can also be used as a browser add-on (www.yolinkeducation.com/education) for Chrome and Safari. Yolink for Chrome and Safari allows students to search within the contents of a webpage, highlight important parts of a page, and send those highlights directly to a Google Doc.

K–12 students tend to undertake common searches. So our students don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every research task. Direct them to publicly shared bookmarking services such as Diigo (diigo.com) and Delicious (delicious.com) to discover what others have found on the same topic. After they’ve grabbed a few links from those public bookmarks, ask your students to contribute some bookmarks of their own.

Finally, there’s Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), which indexes published research. Students looking here, however, shouldn’t expect quick answers to their questions. Perusing Google Scholar is a lot like looking in the bibliography of a good book to identify the best sources on a topic. Google Scholar can lead students to a variety of resources, including abstracts, papers, books, patent records, and court opinions.

The tool lists how many times a particular item has been cited in scholarly works and allows you to click through to see the titles of those works. Some of these items may be available for viewing online, in Google Books, for example. However, certain results in Google Scholar will link to papers and journals contained in subscription-required databases. Those cases are a perfect opportunity to introduce students to the databases available in your school or library and demonstrate that Google is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to research.

Alternative Search Tools: These options to Google will help students become better researchers

Source | http://www.thedigitalshift.com/

Pose a research question to students and most of them will immediately turn to the Internet. Sadly, many students think the only option is Google. Some of our students who have spent a lot of time in the library may try a database like CQ Researcher or ABC-CLIO, but those services require a login to use them. And that can be an obstacle to adoption by students. Here I’ll present some free options for research that don’t require a login, along with a few quick tips to aid student searches.

Every year, several kids will spend 10 minutes on a Web search and say, “Google has nothing on this.” My first response to them is “did you open the links or just read the snippet in the search results page?” If the answer’s no, I send them back to access the links and search within those pages. To help them determine if a page contains what they’re looking for, I teach my students to use “command + F” on a Mac keyboard and “control + F” on Windows. Those shortcuts enable students to search within the contents of a page for a key term or phrase.

Ref Seek (refseek.com) is a search engine whose intention is to only serve links that have potential academic use. Ref Seek seems to eliminate the advertising and paid links found on Google, Ask, Yahoo, and other commercial search tools. To discern the advantage of Ref Seek over a generic Google search, you need to look below the top returns. As you compare search results between the two, you’ll find that the second and third pages of results on Ref Seek will contain more academic resources than you’d typically find in a generic Google search. Students can then sort Ref Seek results into “links only” or “documents only” views.

Yolink (yolink.com) quietly powers the search boxes found on many websites today. Yolink’s technology is included in Sweet Search (sweetsearch.com), a popular tool among teachers, which was profiled in January 2012. But Yolink can also be used as a browser add-on (www.yolinkeducation.com/education) for Chrome and Safari. Yolink for Chrome and Safari allows students to search within the contents of a webpage, highlight important parts of a page, and send those highlights directly to a Google Doc.

K–12 students tend to undertake common searches. So our students don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every research task. Direct them to publicly shared bookmarking services such as Diigo (diigo.com) and Delicious (delicious.com) to discover what others have found on the same topic. After they’ve grabbed a few links from those public bookmarks, ask your students to contribute some bookmarks of their own.

Finally, there’s Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), which indexes published research. Students looking here, however, shouldn’t expect quick answers to their questions. Perusing Google Scholar is a lot like looking in the bibliography of a good book to identify the best sources on a topic. Google Scholar can lead students to a variety of resources, including abstracts, papers, books, patent records, and court opinions.

The tool lists how many times a particular item has been cited in scholarly works and allows you to click through to see the titles of those works. Some of these items may be available for viewing online, in Google Books, for example. However, certain results in Google Scholar will link to papers and journals contained in subscription-required databases. Those cases are a perfect opportunity to introduce students to the databases available in your school or library and demonstrate that Google is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to research.