ABSTRACT
The administration of justice in Assam formed a subject of universal complaint and condemnation. ‘From one extremity of the province to the other’, observed Anandaram Dhekial Phukan in 1853. The administration of justice is the discharge of the state’s obligation to protect the people from any kind of injury. State’s protection is a natural assumption, and anybody who disturbs it makes himself or herself liable to punishment. Laws were replete with anomalies and justice depended largely on the whims of the dispensing officers. The administration of justice needed trained judges to administer the laws which the legislature had provided. The British laid the foundation of a new system of dispensing justice through a hierarchy of civil and criminal courts. Liberal-minded Europeans and others also joined with the Assamese in condemning various aspects of the administration of justice introduced by the British government.
