2.3 Development and Recent Trends of Procedural Laws in Nepal

The development arc: from the Ain-era adda procedure (the Panchayat-and-land-office adjudication) through the 2048 Justice Administration consolidation to the 2074 twin codes — the professionalization-and-rights-orientation arc: procedure rebuilt around the fair-trial guarantees, the specialized tracks, and the delay-cures. 2.3.1 Separate Bench Systems The specialization wave — the courts' internal division by case-type (the docket's professionalization): Civil bench: the property, contract, family-civil, tort claims' designation; Criminal bench: the prosecution-and-defence's specialization (the bail, trial, sentencing flows; the speedy-trial aims); Juvenile bench: the Children's Act's child-justice design — the child-friendly procedure (the closed hearing, the social-worker-and-child-psychologist's association, the diversion-and- rehabilitation preference, the separate records); the children's court-or-bench framework of the Act 2075; Commercial bench: the business disputes' specialized designation (the company, banking, IP- and-insolvency claims — the Supreme Court's-and-the High Courts' commercial benches of the recent practice; the aim: the commercial certainty-and-speed); Constitutional bench: the Constitution's own design — Article 137: the Chief Justice + four justices hearing the constitutional-review petitions, the jurisdiction disputes, the election disputes — the "constitutional court within the Supreme Court"; Family bench: the family disputes' sensitive designation (the reconciliation-first, the privacy, the child-and-gender sensitivity); Live streaming: the hearings' public broadcast (the constitutional cases especially) — the open-justice principle's technological face ("justice must not only be done but be seen"), with the transparency-vs-privacy balances (the in-camera cases excluded; the…