Don’t use titles before names in judgements, orders
HC asks lower court judges
The High Court has conveyed that lower court judges should refrain from using titles like “Dr” and “Barrister” before their names in judgements and orders.
Dr (Doctorate) is an academic or research degree and Barrister is a professional degree. Therefore, those cannot be a part of someone’s name, the court observed, adding that the trend of using such titles takes place due to “superiority complex”.
The HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman came up with the observation in the full text of its order released on Thursday.
On July 7, the bench passed a short order on a suo moto (voluntary) move while hearing a petition, seeking its directive upon Special Judge-5 of Dhaka, Akhtaruzzaman, to further record statements from five witnesses in a murder case.
It came up with the order after examining that Injamamul Islam alias Zishan, an accused in the case, submitted the petition to the HC including an order delivered by the judge who rejected his (Injamamul) application for further recording statements.
The HC noticed that the judge mentioned his name as “Dr Akhtaruzzaman” in the rejection order. The judge on June 13 rejected the application in a case filed for killing one Hyaj Haque in Dhaka in 2014.
In the full text, the HC observed that a number of judges of the Appellate and HC Divisions of the Supreme Court have achieved higher educational degrees and completed higher professional courses.
But they do not mention those before their names or in the official proceedings.
“In this situation, it is not desired and expected that lower court judges… will mention the degrees before their names in their judgements, directives and order-sheets,” it said.
The HC observed that the controls of administration members and other cadres are delegated to the executive and appointing authorities concerned, who have a different system in this regard.
So, making any comment by the judiciary about using higher degrees before names of administration officials and other cadres will be unexpected.