Judicial Reforms of Lord Cornwallis — Judicial Plan of 1787, Judicial Plan of 1790, Judicial Plan of 1793, Progress of Adalat System under Sir John Shore

Lord Cornwallis is remembered outside this paper for surrendering at Yorktown. Inside it, he is remembered for doing something almost nobody in the East India Company had managed in the previous century: designing a court system, changing his mind about it, and then redesigning it again within six years — and getting closer each time to a system that actually worked.

In two minutes

Between 1787 and 1793 Lord Cornwallis issued three successive Judicial Plans that reversed, then finally separated, revenue and judicial power in Bengal, created a professional cadre of judges and law officers, and laid the groundwork Sir John Shore then consolidated into a more stable Adalat system.

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