Law Commons^™

Savenda Management Services Limited V Stanbic Bank Zambia Limited & Gregory Chifire (Alleged Contemnor) (Appeal No. 37/2017) [2018] Zmsc 11, Mwami Kabwabwa

SAIPAR Case Review

Adjudicators have a social responsibility. When the Judiciary/judges carry out their constitutional mandate of dispensing justice it is critical to bear in mind that judges carry a level of responsibility for the impact that their decisions have on society. For this reason, judges ought to be held responsible for every judgment they render either good or bad. Contempt is an exceedingly powerful instrument in the hands of the courts to tame the conduct and behaviour of lawyers and lay people who come into contact with judicial authority. Like any other power, the exercise of contempt power has to be checked. …

Mutembo Nchito V Attorney General 2016/Cc/0029 (27 October 2020), O'Brien Kaaba, Pamela Towela Sambo

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Daniel Mwale V Njolomole Mtonga And Another Appeal No.004 (2019), Dunia P. Zongwe

SAIPAR Case Review

This is a classic case of sour grapes. After failing to secure a favourable decision from the judges, the losing party accused them of prejudice. This happened in the Mwale v Mtonga matter, decided by the Supreme Court of Zambia in 2019. When his appeal failed, Daniel Mwale reacted by accusing that court and the entire judiciary of corruption.

The Mwale v Mtonga dispute brings up a number of themes: perceptions of corruption in the courts, unjustified public attacks against the judiciary, constraints on judges’ ability to respond to those attacks, the airing of corruption allegations in the wrong forum, …

Abedinego Kapeshi And Another V The People Scz Selected Judgment No. 35 Of 2017, Gift Sangende

SAIPAR Case Review

In 2017, the appellants, being dissatisfied with the judgment of the Kabwe High Court appealed to the Supreme Court. They contended among other things, that the trial court erred in law to convict the appellants of murder. They further stated that the court erred in law to sentence the appellants to life imprisonment, as the sentence was excessive.

This case accorded the Supreme Court a great opportunity to discuss the belief in witchcraft and the offending conduct premised on that belief, as well as the multiple violations that are coupled with the same belief. Remarkably, the Court moved away from …

The Six-Month List And The Unintended Consequences Of Judicial Accountibility, Miguel F. P. De Figueiredo, Alexandra D. Lahav, Peter Siegelman

Cornell Law Review

A little-known mechanism instituted to improve judicial accountability and speed up the work of the federal judiciary has led to unintended consequences, many of them unfortunate. Federal district court judges are subject to a soft deadline known as the Six-Month List (the List). By law, every judge's backlog (cases older than three years and motions pending more than six months) is made public twice a year. Because judges have life tenure and fixed salaries, a mere reporting requirement should not influence their behavior. But it does. Using the complete record of all federal civil cases between 1980 and 2017 and …