{"id":29873,"date":"2018-10-26T12:50:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=29873"},"modified":"2018-10-26T12:50:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:20:27","slug":"reviewing-the-contempt-of-courts-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/reviewing-the-contempt-of-courts-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviewing the Contempt of Courts Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/reviewing-the-contempt-of-courts-act\/article23608653.ece\">Reviewing the Contempt of Courts Act<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Law Commission on why the Act should remain as it is<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Contempt of Courts Act<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Contempt of Courts Act of 1971 is one of the most powerful statutes in the country<\/li>\n<li>It gives the constitutional courts wide powers to restrict an individual\u2019s fundamental right to personal liberty for \u201cscandalising the court\u201d or for \u201cwilful disobedience\u201d of any judgment, writ, direction or order<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Offence of \u201cscandalizing the court\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The offence of \u201cscandalizing the court\u201d continues in India even though it was abolished as an offence in England and Wales long ago.<\/li>\n<li>On March 8, 2018, the Department of Justice wrote to the Law Commission of India, asking it to examine an amendment to the Act to remove \u201cscandalizing the court\u201d as a ground for contempt and restrict contempt to only \u201cwilful disobedience\u201d of directions\/judgments of the court.<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Law Commission Report<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To delete the provision relating to \u2018criminal contempt\u2019 inter alia \u2018scandalizing of courts\u2019 will have no impact on the power of the Superior Courts to punish for contempt (including criminal contempt) in view of their inherent constitutional powers, as these powers are independent of statutory provisions\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The Law Commission informed the government that the 1971 Act was a good influence<\/li>\n<li>In fact, the statute, by laying down procedure, restricts the vast authority of the courts in wielding contempt powers<\/li>\n<li>The 1971 Act contains \u201cadequate safeguards to exclude instances which may not amount to criminal contempt\u201d as defined under Section 2(c) of the Act 1971<\/li>\n<li>The Commission said the statute has stood the test of judicial scrutiny for about five decades<\/li>\n<li>It empowers the High Court to act if someone is in contempt of the subordinate courts.<\/li>\n<li>Diluting the Act would expose the subordinate judiciary to acts of contempt of court.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reviewing the Contempt of Courts Act Context The Law Commission on why the Act should remain as it is\u00a0 Contempt of Courts Act The Contempt of Courts Act of 1971 is one of the most powerful statutes in the country It gives the constitutional courts wide powers to restrict an individual\u2019s fundamental right to personal&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/reviewing-the-contempt-of-courts-act\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reviewing the Contempt of Courts Act<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":31,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}