Sonipat,  Economic dimensions play a very important role in judicial decisions and can help strengthen the system, particularly in the time of a pandemic, said experts at a two-day virtual event hosted by the O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) and CUTS International.

The two-day national virtual conference was held from April 27-28 on the theme 'Economic Dimensions in Judicial Decisions'.

"The pandemic has shown that the rich get richer and the super-rich gets much richer, but those at the bottom of the economic ladder were the ones who were very badly hit. Judicial decision-making and legislative action must ... not only look at the importance of corporates and their contribution to society but also look at marginalised sections of the society, former Supreme Court judge, Justice Madan Lokur, said in a statement.

"The judges need to acquire greater expertise or assistance from an expert body to apply more effectively economic factors into their judgements for the purposes of bringing economic prosperity. The role of courts is very important in the economic growth of a country," added former apex court judge, Justice Swatanter Kumar.

The two-day virtual conference saw over 45 thought leaders including judges, legal practitioners, experts from the government and regulatory bodies, academicians and scholars, members from media and the civil society come together to address the importance of Economic Dimensions in Judicial Decisions.

"If the judiciary would like to see it evolve as a very sensible institution where to get its own actions analysed and publicly debated, there is no harm in that. There are various ways to institutionalise, you have the law commission for example who could look into this or maybe the Supreme Court itself could set up a body which could do this on its own," Pradeep Mehta, Secretary General, CUTS International.

The conference witnessed discussions on a wide range of topics including 'Economic Analysis of Public, Infrastructure, Trade, and Constitutional Law'; 'Law and Economics Approach to Corporate Laws and Corporate Debt Restructuring in India'; 'Law & Economics Approach to Competition Policy, Digital Economy and New Technologies'; 'An Economic Analysis of Industrial Innovation and Intellectual Property Law'; 'Economic Analysis in Public Health and Environment Domains'; 'Teaching economics to law students, and law to economics students in India'.