ARTICLE TEXT

A strike by transport workers stops buses. A strike by lawyers stops justice. When a bar association in Bangladesh resolves to boycott the courts, whether over a judge’s conduct, a government policy or a dispute with the police, thousands of hearings are adjourned, remand prisoners stay in custody and cases already years old grow older. The practice is common, accepted within the profession, and almost never challenged. Should it be?

The New Context

On 13 September 2026, the High Court Division held that strikes and hartals called in protest against court verdicts are illegal and unconstitutional. The case arose from a transport strike, and the directions were addressed to the Home Ministry and the road transport authorities. The court relied on Article 112, which requires all authorities to act in aid of the Supreme Court, and reasoned that a party aggrieved by a judgment has a lawful remedy in appeal, not in shutting down the roads. The judgment did not mention lawyers. But its logic invites an obvious question: if it is unconstitutional for bus owners to strike against a verdict, what of the lawyers who boycott the court that gave it?

The Indian Answer

India confronted the question two decades ago. In Ex-Captain Harish Uppal v Union of India, decided on 17 December 2002, the Supreme Court held that lawyers have no right to go on strike or to call for a boycott, not even a token strike. The court reasoned that an advocate’s first duty is to the client and the court; a strike breaks that duty, and the client, not the state, pays the price. It held that bar associations calling strikes could be held in contempt, that courts should not adjourn cases merely because lawyers are absent, and that only in the rarest of cases, where the dignity or independence of the bar itself is under attack, might a one-day protest be tolerated, and then only with the court’s permission. Strikes in Indian courts have not stopped, but they have become legally indefensible.

The Case for a Right to Protest

Lawyers in Bangladesh who defend the practice make serious arguments. The bar, they say, is the only organised body able to resist executive interference with the courts. When a judge is transferred for political reasons, when police assault lawyers in the court premises, when the government ignores a judgment, the bar’s collective withdrawal is the only sanction available. Individual protest is easily punished; collective protest is not.

They add that lawyers are independent professionals, not employees or public servants. No statute takes away their freedom of association under Article 38 or their freedom of assembly under Article 37. A bar association resolution is not a hartal by force; no one is compelled to comply.

And they observe that the profession’s history is bound up with protest. Lawyers led the movement for the separation of the judiciary and the campaigns against martial law. To deny them collective action now would be to disarm the judiciary’s most reliable allies.

The Case Against

The reply is that all of this may be true and still not justify a boycott. The Bangladesh Bar Council’s canons of professional conduct require an advocate to serve the client faithfully. A lawyer who does not appear because the bar has resolved not to has abandoned the client for a cause the client never chose. The remand prisoner whose bail hearing is adjourned, the widow whose land case is put off for another six months, the accused whose witnesses will not come again: these are the people who bear the cost.

Critics also note who calls the strikes. Bar association elections in Bangladesh are contested on party lines, and boycotts are as often political as professional. A strike against a judge who has decided against a party’s interest is not a defence of judicial independence; it is an attack on it.

A Possible Rule

The Indian solution, an outright prohibition backed by contempt, is one option. A more modest reform would have three parts. First, the Bar Council should adopt a rule that no member may absent themselves from a listed hearing on account of a bar resolution without the client’s informed written consent. Second, courts should not adjourn cases because of a boycott, so that a lawyer who chooses to strike does so at their own risk. Third, bar associations should retain the right to protest by every other means: statements, petitions, demonstrations outside court hours, and refusal to cooperate with the executive in matters that do not involve clients.

Such a rule would preserve the bar’s political voice while protecting the people it exists to serve. Whether the profession would accept it is another matter. But after the hartal judgment, it may not be the profession’s choice alone. A litigant who loses a hearing to a boycott now has a constitutional argument, and it is only a matter of time before someone makes it.

Sources

1. The Business Standard, Hartals, strikes against court verdicts are illegal: High Court (13 September 2026): https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/court/hartals-strikes-against-court-verdicts-orders-are-illegal-high-court-1541356
2. Ex-Capt. Harish Uppal v Union of India, (2003) 2 SCC 45, Indian Kanoon: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1292543/
3. Bangladesh Bar Council, Canons of Professional Conduct and Etiquette: https://www.barcouncil.gov.bd/canons-of-professional-conduct-and-etiquette/
4. Constitution of Bangladesh, Articles 37, 38 and 112: http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-367.html