In the spring of 2021 India was hit by a severe second wave of Covid-19. Vaccines were scarce, and state governments drew up priority lists for frontline workers. Lawyers and their clerks, who were still attending courts across Kerala, asked to be included.
The case
A petition, listed as Benny Antony Parel v. Union of India, asked the Kerala High Court to direct that advocates and those who work with them be treated as a priority group. The state government had already issued an order on 2 June 2021 covering judicial officers and the staff of the High Court and the subordinate courts.
The order
On 3 June 2021 a bench of Justices A. Muhammed Mustaque and Kauser Edappagath directed the Kerala government to include practising lawyers and their clerks in the vaccination priority list and to amend its 2 June order accordingly. Reporting described the court's view that lawyers and clerks were an indispensable part of the justice delivery system. Kerala then extended priority vaccination to lawyers.
Other states
Similar requests were made in other parts of India. Bar associations argued that courts could not function safely, and access to justice would suffer, if lawyers, clerks and litigants were exposed to infection in crowded court buildings. Some critics questioned whether courts should be ordering priority for the legal profession at a time of national shortage.
Why it matters
The episode raised a question every country faced in the pandemic: what counts as an essential service? Courts in many countries moved hearings online, but not everything could be done remotely, and the people who keep courts running are not only judges. Kerala's decision treated the wider legal workforce as part of the justice system rather than as private businesses.