{"id":244597,"date":"2023-05-26T20:49:22","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T15:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=244597"},"modified":"2023-05-26T20:49:22","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T15:19:22","slug":"why-do-judges-recuse-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/why-do-judges-recuse-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do judges recuse themselves?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cWhy do judges recuse themselves?<\/strong>\u201d published in The Hindu <\/strong>on\u00a026th<\/sup> May 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 <\/strong>Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Relevance: <\/strong>About Recusal of Judges<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>: Supreme Court judge Justice M.R. Shah has recently refused to recuse himself from hearing a plea by former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt.<\/p>\n

Why do judges recuse?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Click Here to Read<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The practice of recusal originates from the basic concept of due process of law<\/strong>, that no one shall be a judge in his or her own case.<\/p>\n

What is the procedure for recusal?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are two kinds of recusals \u2014 1)<\/strong> an automatic recusal where a judge himself withdraws from the case, 2)<\/strong> when a party raises a plea for recusal highlighting the possibility of bias of the judge in the case.<\/p>\n

The decision to recuse rests solely on the conscience and discretion of the judge and no party can compel a judge to withdraw from a case.\u00a0<\/strong>If a judge recuses himself, the case is listed before the Chief Justice for allotment to an alternate Bench.<\/p>\n

Do judges have to record a reason for recusal?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Click Here to Read<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There are different views regarding the declaring the reason for recusal.<\/p>\n

For instance,<\/strong> Justice Kurien Joseph in the NJAC judgment, believed that giving reasons for recusal is the constitutional duty of a judge while Justice Madan Lokur was of the opinion that citing reasons for recusal is unwarranted.<\/p>\n

The Delhi High Court recently ruled<\/strong> that no litigant or third party has any right to intervene, comment or enquire regarding a judge\u2019s recusal from a case.<\/p>\n

What rules has the Supreme Court laid down for recusal<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In Ranjit Thakur versus Union of India (1987)<\/strong>, the SC said that if a party has a reasonable belief that a judge may be biased in a case, the judge should consider recusing themselves to ensure impartiality and fairness in the judicial process.<\/p>\n

In the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association versus the Union of India (2015),<\/strong> the court observed that where a judge has a pecuniary interest, no further inquiry is needed as to whether there was a \u2018real danger\u2019 or \u2018reasonable suspicion\u2019 of bias.<\/p>\n

Further, Justice Arun Mishra in the Indore Development Authority versus Manoharlal and Ors<\/strong><\/em> (2019) <\/strong>held that a judge who has recused himself from hearing a case in the smaller bench is not disqualified from being a part of the larger bench for the same case.<\/p>\n

Do foreign countries have laws related to recusal of judges?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

US:<\/strong> The U.S. has a well-defined law on recusals. Such rules are also codified. In the US, there are three grounds for recusal \u2014 1)<\/strong> financial or corporate interest, 2)<\/strong> a case in which the judge was a material witness or a lawyer, 3)<\/strong> and a relationship to a party.<\/p>\n

UK:<\/strong> The \u2018real danger\u2019 test was adopted as the applicable standard for the recusal of judge.\u00a0However, after its criticism, a new test was formulated, where the standard laid down was to look at the likelihood of bias from the perspective of a fair-minded and reasonable observer.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> The “real danger” test is a legal standard used to establish if a decision-maker has a high possibility of bias, requiring their recusal from a case in order to maintain the fairness and integrity of the proceedings.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cWhy do judges recuse themselves?\u201d published in The Hindu on\u00a026th May 2023. Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary Relevance: About Recusal of Judges News: Supreme Court judge Justice M.R. Shah has recently refused to recuse himself from hearing a plea… Continue reading Why do judges recuse themselves?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10498],"class_list":["post-244597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":7,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1698459607},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}