Increasing workload, a higher rate of admission, and constitution of multiple two-judge Division Benches have resulted in a huge increase in the number of judgments handed down by the Supreme Court, which again increases the probability of inconsistencies in judgments.
Criteria that were never conceived in the Constituent Assembly now determine who gets to sit on India’s apex court. Each of these unwritten qualifications, age, seniority, and diversity, is problematic in its present form. By ABHINAV CHANDRACHUD Frontline May 3 2013
Of all the promises made in the Constitution, the most important are the promises of the ‘right to life’, the ‘right to dignity’, the ‘right to personal liberty’ and the ‘right to bodily integrity and health’.
IN his classic book Politics of the Judiciary, first published in 1977, Professor J.A.G. Griffith exposed the myth of judicial neutrality in the United Kingdom. Griffith, who passed away on May 8, 2010, at the age of 91, had many admirers, among them India's own nonagenarian jurist, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. Citing Griffith, Justice Iyer wrote in The Hindu recently that to have political views and beliefs is not a form of guilt; to hide it is guilt.
Since it alters the entire mechanism for investigating allegations of misbehaviour against members of the higher judiciary and simplifies the procedure for their removal, the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill is a hugely significant piece of legislation. The proposed law, which seeks to replace the outmoded Judges Inquiry Act 1968, under which cumbersome impeachment trials are necessary to dismiss erring judges, lays down enforceable norms for their conduct and enables a wider range of disciplinary action for proven misbehaviour.
On August 18, 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking at the 150th year celebrations of the Bombay High Court, said the government was in favour of raising the age of retirement of High Court judges. Presently, Supreme Court judges retire at 65 and High Court judges at 62.
A commission to select judges will be an improvement on the collegium only if its members are of the highest standing
Wide consultation, rather than the closed-door deliberations of the collegium, is what the Supreme Court and the High Courts need
Tax avoidance through artificial devices — holding companies, subsidiaries, treaty shopping and selling valuable properties indirectly by entering into a maze of framework agreements — has become a very lucrative industry today.
The Dinakaran episode has brought to the surface the vexed problem of the arbitrary and totally unsatisfactory manner of selecting and appointing judges as well as the unresolved problem of dealing with complaints of misconduct and corruption against judges. In this bracing article Prashant Bhushan analyses these long simmering twin problems which lie at the heart of Judicial Accountablity
The judiciary is the most sublime instrumentality in the country and I have served it for nearly a decade during the best part of my life. This article, written out of reverence for the judicature, has a benign intent meant to arrest its corruption and decline now creeping into its vitals.
A few weeks ago, one of India’s finest judges, Chief Justice A.P. Shah, retired from judicial office
at the age of 62.
This is yet another supersession of judges, not in the technical sense but in all other respects. Justice A.P. Shah, who retired from the office of Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court a week ago, was one of the finest judges in the country. He was also the senior most.
The study was conducted through secondary data collection, by a core group at the Campaign for Judicial Accountability & Reform. It was conducted over 3-4 months in the last quarter of 2009.
Justice AP Shah, responsible for such landmark judgments as the one on consensual gay sex, retired as Chief Justice of Delhi High Court after being overlooked for promotion to the Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court of India, and a Supreme Court for all Indians: these two versions can be radically different in terms of principle and content.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) K.G. Balakrishnan completed three years in office on January 13 and will retire on May 11.
THE Indian Supreme Court has a reputation for being a “people’s court” or, as one judge put it, a “last resort for the oppressed and bewildered”.
Justice A.P. Shah’s judgment in the Delhi high court on the applicability of the Right to Information (RTI) Act is as fine as any bench of the Supreme Court could deliver.
When justice is denied by any society, including a socialist, secular and democratic one as in India, expectations darken into depression.
NEW DELHI: While sharing a dais with Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan, senior advocate Fali Nariman recently attacked the Supreme Court collegium for its failure to promote the author of the historic homosexuality verdict, chief justice of the Delhi high court A P Shah.
Thanks to legal professionals the world around, the ‘dead’ language of Latin remains happily alive.
It is a well-settled principle of law that the presence of a conflict of interest — actual or potential — is sufficient to disqualify judges from participating in legal proceedings.
[gview file=”http://judicialreforms.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/TOI_Petitioners_didnt_have_say_on_kapadia_presence.pdf” height=”800px”] [gview file=”http://judicialreforms.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/TOI_judges_skirt_global_norms_on_conflict_of_interest.pdf” height=”800px”]
Chief Justice of India Sabyasachi Mukharji’s advice to Justice Ramaswami to desist from discharging judicial functions so long as investigations continued is worthy of emulation.
THE Supreme Court’s collegium comprising the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and four senior judges, which recommends appointees to the Supreme Court, exercises a crucial responsibility.
Little did Subash Chandra Agrawal know that his RTI petition would create a first in history. His request two years ago, seeking information on whether judges were filing details of their assets under their 1997 inhouse resolution to do so, has brought about such a turn that for the first time, the Supreme Court of India has knocked at the doors of a High Court seeking a relook into one of its orders.
WHEN SPECIAL CBI judge Rama Jain received an anonymous letter in January 2008, telling her that the provident funds of Class 3 and Class 4 employees of the Ghaziabad court were being siphoned off, she had no idea that she had stumbled onto the biggest judicial scam in the history of independent India.
On September 2, when a single judge of the Delhi High Court directed a beam of moral searchlight at the Supreme world saw a group of embarrassed brethren trying to ward off the harsh glare.
The ruling of the Delhi High Court in the CPIO versus S.C. Aggarwal case and the open letter by a group of jurists to the Chief Justice of India have brought to focus critical issues of transparency in the judiciary.
India's villages await justice
“The public injury which may be caused by appointment of a Judge lacking in integrity would be infinitely more than the public injury which may result from non-appointment of a competent Judge possessing integrity.”
The public loses respect for the judicature if there is one corrupt judge who can
discredit the high institution.
Public pressure, the principled position taken by certain judges and one ruling by the Delhi High Court have compelled public disclosure of assets by judges. But this is certainly not the end of the serious problem of a lack of judicial accountability.
THE Indian judiciary is considered the most powerful in the world by many observers. In terms of standards of accountability, however, the higher judiciary in India is viewed as the least accountable. The August 26 resolution of the Supreme Court’s Full Court in favour of disclosure of judges’ assets on the court’s website is a result of a sustained campaign by various civil society groups and activists and the sheer force of public opinion, which viewed with suspicion the judiciary’s reluctance to disclose judges’ assets.
The decision to declare assets is a big victory. Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan tells SHOMA CHAUDHURY what else is rotting in our judiciary It’s great judges have agreed to declare assets. But will it really help? Politicians do it too.
Let me begin by commending Justice S. Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi high court for his excellent judgment of September 2, 2009 in the judges’ assets case, the quality of which would do credit to anyone at the highest level in the judicial hierarchy.
These past weeks have been difficult times for the Supreme Court, particularly the Chief Justice of India (CJI), over making public the details of judges’ assets. Reacting to the CJI’s statements rejecting such disclosure, Justice D.V. Shylendra Kumar of the Karnataka High Court wrote a forthright article in a newspaper stating the CJI did not speak for the many judges of integrity in India.
I AM AN insipid person to talk to and no celebrity to deserve a feature. My website gives you a glimpse of my interests and my High Court website has some placid news about me.
The power of three against one: that’s how the battle of their lordships, India’s chief justices past and present, has panned out over the ongoing row over the judiciary making their assets public.