Law Must Serve the Last Person in the Queue — Not Just the Powerful
“The true test of justice is not how a society treats its elite, but how it protects the invisible.”
Justice Seen from the Back of the Line
In every courtroom there is a silent hierarchy.
At the front stand corporations armed with elite legal teams, governments with endless procedural power, and individuals who can buy time, influence, and delay.
At the back of the queue stand the daily-wage worker, the rural widow, the illiterate borrower, the undertrial prisoner, the farmer whose land is taken without notice, and the small borrower whose house is auctioned silently.
Law claims to be blind — yet in reality it often squints, seeing the powerful first.
The idea that “law must serve the last person in the queue — not just the powerful” is not poetry. It is the constitutional philosophy of justice itself.
1. The Philosophical Foundation: Justice for the Marginalized
Mahatma Gandhi taught that true swaraj begins not with freedom for elites but with dignity for the weakest. His concept of sarvodaya — the upliftment of all — demanded that every legal decision be tested on one measure:
Does it help the poorest person I have ever seen?
John Rawls later echoed this in his “veil of ignorance” theory: laws must be framed without knowing one’s own social position, so that they inevitably benefit the least advantaged.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar embedded this thinking into the Indian Constitution, insisting that law must dismantle caste, poverty, and inherited disadvantage — not merely manage them.
2. From Colonial Control to Constitutional Promise
India’s legal system was not born neutral.
Colonial statutes like the IPC and Evidence Act preserved order, not justice. Land acquisition laws legalized dispossession. Sedition criminalized dissent while zamindars thrived.
Independence transformed law’s purpose:
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Article 14 – Equality before law
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Article 21 – Life with dignity
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Article 39A – Equal justice & free legal aid
Landmark rulings gave life to this promise:
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Maneka Gandhi (1978): Procedure must be fair, not merely legal.
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Bandhua Mukti Morcha (1984): Bonded labourers were given constitutional standing.
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Olga Tellis (1985): Right to livelihood recognized for pavement dwellers.
Yet the promise remains half-fulfilled.
3. The Queue Metaphor: Who Actually Waits the Longest?
The “last person in the queue” is not symbolic. It is:
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The borrower who never received possession notice.
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The widow who cannot read the auction publication.
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The migrant worker denied wages.
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The farmer whose land is acquired without compensation.
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The undertrial who has already served more time than the sentence he may receive.
For them, law is not slow — it is unreachable.
4. Procedural Terrorism: When Law Becomes a Weapon
The powerful rarely win by merit. They win by process abuse:
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Endless adjournments
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Interlocutory floods
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Limitation traps
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Technical service defects
Procedure becomes punishment.
Justice becomes survival of the richest.
A legal system obsessed with paperwork but blind to human suffering is not justice — it is ritualized cruelty.
5. Institutions Measuring Efficiency, Not Empathy
Courts were meant to be temples of justice — not corridors of privilege.
Yet today:
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Filing counters close early while injustice runs 24×7.
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Judges lament pendency but not despair.
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Banks violate SARFAESI safeguards and borrowers are blamed for delay.
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State authorities ignore notices — citizens suffer consequences.
Institutions count files, not broken lives.
6. The Constitutional Vision: Justice from the Bottom Up
Every democracy carries an unspoken command:
Lift the weakest first.
This vision lives in:
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Legal aid mandates
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Beneficial interpretation doctrine
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Natural justice principles
But modern jurisprudence increasingly speaks the language of balance sheets, not broken homes.
7. What Must Change
(a) Human-Centered Procedure
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Mandatory inquiry into defective service.
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Time-bound disposal for poor litigants.
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Automatic compensation for procedural abuse.
(b) End Cost as a Weapon
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Realistic compensatory costs.
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Penalties for frivolous litigation by powerful entities.
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Refund of court fees when courts cause delay.
(c) Courts Must Descend from Ivory Towers
Judgments must be readable by the person who won — not only by lawyers.
8. The Advocate’s True Duty
An advocate is not merely a case handler.
He is the last bridge between despair and dignity.
When lawyers chase only influential clients and abandon the powerless, they do not just fail individuals — they weaken democracy itself.
Measure Justice from the Back, Not the Front
A nation is not judged by how it treats billionaires in boardrooms,
but by how it listens to the man who cannot read his own notice.
Law must not wait for the poor to become powerful.
Law must go to where powerlessness lives.
The last person in the queue does not ask for privilege.
He asks only for presence.
Until the legal system walks backward in that line, bends down, and hears his story — justice will remain a promise, not a reality.
