LAWYERS CAN’T REFUSE BRIEF, NO MATTER WHO THE CLIENT: SC

Citing past instances of lawyers defending assassins of Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi to the ones who represented Dr Binayak Sen

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August 17, 2022

Citing past instances of lawyers defending assassins of Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi to the ones who represented Dr Binayak Sen, accused of links with Naxals, the Supreme Court has ruled that lawyers cannot refuse a brief, no matter what the profile of the client is. “Every person, however wicked, depraved, vile, degenerate, perverted, loathsome, execrable, vicious or repulsive he may be regarded by society, has a right to be defended in a court of law and correspondingly it is the duty of the lawyer to defend him,” a Bench led by Justice Markandeya Katju said. The SC declared “null and void” any resolutions so far passed by bar associations across India which ban a lawyer from being an “attorney for the damned”. “We declare all such resolutions… null and void and right minded lawyers should ignore and defy such resolutions if they want democracy and rule of law to be upheld in this country,” the apex court declared. As long as the client is willing to pay the fee and the lawyer is not otherwise engaged, no practising legal practitioner can afford to shirk defending a person “who is alleged to be a terrorist or an accused of a brutal or heinous crime or a rapist” on the ground that it will make him (the lawyer) unpopular or that it is personally dangerous, the court said. Justice Katju, who wrote the judgment, ordered its circulation to all high courts and state bar councils. The verdict came in a petition regarding a resolution passed by the Coimbatore Bar Association that no member would defend policemen accused of violence against lawyers, in a clash between lawyers and police in 2007.