Supreme Court judges do important service to the nation – they are entitled to choose legal and moral avenues to keep themselves occupied after retirement
Supreme Court judges do important service to the nation – they are entitled to choose legal and moral avenues to keep themselves occupied after retirement
In the past two decades, the attention devoted to the role of the judiciary has grown almost exponentially. It is rare to pass a day without at least a couple of front page stories in our national dailies dedicated to what happened in the constitutional courts. Even as I write this, cameras are slowly turning to the Supreme Court to see how Maharashtra dispute will play outside It should come as no surprise, therefore, that events in court invite opinions and opinions, many of them doing their business within those sacred portals (which this author includes). Most of these pieces are devoted to specific decisions and short-term events, but occasionally, we see one that deals with institutional issues – the larger malaise that needs to be addressed – and then, we take a broad lens on those suggestions. think through.
One of these is the article of Shri Ram Panchu.A wish list to reform India’s higher judiciary‘ (published in Hindu on June 22, 2022). Certainly, some good points have been made (even if I ignore the rumor he mentions in the first paragraph) – that all judges should have the same retirement age and there is no reason to believe that judges should have the same retirement age. tend to lose their abilities in their early sixties. These issues are not new, however, as the Law Commission of India raised it again and again in its 58th report over 50 years ago. The Constitution (114th Amendment) Bill, 2010which later ended.
most important role
Where I diverge from Mr. Panchu is his belief that judges, once retired, should have a sense of public service, and to make matters worse, they should be attached to appointments and special functions. I need not mention that Supreme Court judges are serious constitutional officials who play perhaps the most important role in the republic. Many of them have swapped settled and lucrative careers for a small portion of their annual income, a heavy workload and almost no social life. From these glorious confines where they must not react to criticism, conjecture and even slander, we expect these women and men to offer an excellent quality of justice, apparently sleepless nights, cumbersome roosters and unaffected by many administrative tasks.
I don’t think these citizens of our country, who have made so much sacrifice, need to take lessons in “Jan Seva”. After devoting two points of his life to exactly that, he is allowed – no, entitled – to choose the legal and moral paths to keep himself occupied. Arbitration, which lessens the burden of a crumbling trial court system, only advances the interests of the public and the parties involved, and even if it does not, it is not clear that a foreign visitor to a retired judge Why do you have to go by the principle of charity even after retirement?
Call to Senior Advocates
Indeed, the lament that judges “make fortunes” through post-retirement arbitration and that a minority of them devote themselves to public service is in the wrong direction. Maybe it would be more appropriate to turn the proverbial mirror on the senior advocates – the clan we both belong to. It’s no secret that the upper class of this club (which I don’t regret) are among the highest-paid lawyers in the world, easily making millions of dollars a month.
If at all, it is to him and others like him that appeals to public service should be addressed. Surely, dozens of years devoted to amassing wealth can now make way for the “public service” we demand of others? It may be time for senior lawyers to reach retirement age – they can spend their later years teaching at universities, assisting the Law Commission or even giving back to the profession by writing thoughtful works.
Selection of Chief Justice of India
Now, Mr. Panchu’s next suggestion: that the Chief Justice of India should be succeeded by the “best eminent Chief Justice of the High Court” at that time. To forget for a moment that most of the other judges of the Supreme Court would have been Chief Justices of High Courts, to jump on all of them and settle for a brand new person in the Supreme Court is absurd in the extreme. Also, who decides the “reputation” of the Chief Justice? We have four important Supreme Court judgments in 1981, 1993, 1998 and 2015, which have reiterated the independence of the judiciary and attempted to strengthen it with a collegium system – should we remember the dark but forgotten days of the 1970s? should be withdrawn. When not one but two encroachments tarnished the appointment of the Chief Justice of India by turning away from a subjective idea of ’eminence’?
As far as the appointment of the senior most judge to the top post is concerned, it is well known that this rule came about because of the unanimous stand of all the judges of the Supreme Court of 1951 that if the senior most (Madras’ own Patanjali Shastri) had to resign, was threatened. Ignored in favor of MC Chagla of Bombay, as wanted by Jawaharlal Nehru. That became an intervention practice and, with the exception of two supersession and one medical exception, never departed in 72 years.
I share Mr. Panchu’s enduring concern about the fate of our judiciary, and I fully agree that Chief Justices should not have their “autocratic way”, as he so eloquently puts it. But a lot of that is based on individual personality – some would object to the fact that the last 14 months under Chief Justice NV Ramana have shown that a truly collegiate approach is possible, and no question has been raised about roster allocation. , such as that which plagued his predecessors. Perhaps it is time for acta, non verba (action, not words).
Gopal Sankaranarayanan is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India