{"id":34036,"date":"2018-10-30T15:34:36","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T10:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=34036"},"modified":"2018-10-30T15:34:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T10:04:36","slug":"supreme-court-diminished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/supreme-court-diminished\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme court, diminished"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/supreme-court-diminished-judiciary-judges-cji-cbi-justice-chelameswar-legal-law-advocate-dipak-misra-4936101\/\"><b>Supreme court, diminished<\/b><\/a><b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The judiciary has created a crisis of institutional credibility for itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Crisis situation for Judiciary:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court of India is facing worst crisis of credibility since the Emergency.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The quality of the court\u2019s reasoning, the inconstancy of its judgment, the abdication of its constitutional role in some cases, and is overreach in others, are already denting its authority.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The present crisis was occasioned by an order passed by Justice J Chelameswar to constitute a five-judge bench in a petition filed by CJAR that demanded that a SIT be constituted to look into an alleged corruption scandal pertaining to a case involving a medical college.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are issues of corruption in the courts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The judiciary has failed to find a mechanism to deal with allegations of corruption within its ranks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Institutional challenge to the judiciary is also one of the causes of crisis of identity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many learned counsel have defended Justice Chelameswar\u2019s move by invoking Article 142 that gives judges the power to do whatever it takes to secure justice. But the use of Article 142 has also become a sign of immense judicial indiscipline, where judges can easily ride roughshod over other procedural properties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Communication between judges seems to have broken down to the point where the senior leadership of the court is incapable of getting together and coming up with common sense procedural solutions to cases .<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The distrust amongst judges is extraordinarily high.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court\u2019s loss of external credibility combined with internal anarchy does not bode well for Indian democracy. Instead of becoming a constitutional lodestar in our turbulent times, the court has itself become a reflection of the worst rot afflicting Indian institutions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Chief Justice of India<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chief Justice is the senior most judge in the country, i.e, he is at the apex in the court of law. He sits in the supreme court, the court of Apex.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most powerful authority someone as a chief justice can have is, to become an acting President or vice President when the post is vacant until the next President is selected.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CJI is constitutional post. He\/she is who gives oath to president\/vice President of india.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He\/she assigns judicial and administrative work to judges and registers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Represent India in International Judicial\/ legal forum.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The appointment of CJI<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Chief Justice is appointed by the President in consultation with such other judges of the Supreme Court and High Court as he may deem necessary.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Convention dictates the appointment of the senior most judges of the Supreme Court as Chief Justice.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other judges are appointed by the President after consultation with the Chief justice and such other judges of the Supreme Court and the high court\u2019s as deemed necessary.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Consultation with the Chief justice is considered necessary for the appointment of any judge other than the Chief justice.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>How powerful is CJI?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moral power: Chief Justice is the senior most judge in the country, i.e, he is at the apex in the court of law. He sits in the supreme court, the court of Apex.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Political power: The most powerful authority someone as a chief justice can have is, to become an acting President or vice President when the post is vacant until the next President is selected.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legal power: As head of the Supreme Court, the chief justice is responsible for the allocation of cases and appointment of constitutional benches which deal with important matters of law. Chief Justice allocates all work to the other judges who are bound to refer the matter back to him or her<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Indian judiciary and its problems:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Indian judiciary has been placed in between the Westminster model (where judiciary is rather toothless) and the American model (where judiciary is supreme). The Judiciary has, in India&#8217;s independent history, more often than not tipped the scales back in favor of libertarian democracy whenever the balance has been disturbed by executive action. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>However, the Indian judiciary suffers from ample problems:<\/b><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Pendency: Judicial proceedings are complex and entangled in technical jargon. Cases take years, sometimes decades, to be decided.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The &#8216;climb up&#8217; of cases: Cases are seldom decided at the subordinate level and often get heard at various levels of judicial hierarchy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Shortage of judges: There is an acute shortage of judges due to reasons like delay in appointment etc, and the lower judiciary seldom attracts good talent. The recruitment process attracts allegations of corruption.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Proliferation through SLPs: A lot of cases are entertained under article 136, which would otherwise not fall in the criminal\/appellate\/advisory jurisdictions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Technical nature of cases: Often the judges have to hear cases related to technical matters such as taxation, environmental policy etc<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weak Subordinate Courts:-We can think of Supreme Court and Many High courts as Strong institutions but at day to day level most of the cases are handled by the subordinate level which do not have well specialized manpower and hence are weak.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>A proper framework and method of specialization should be introduced in appointment of judges at the subordinate level.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><b>Conclusion:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is need to take proper care so that <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the anti-corruption measures taken do not undermine the independence of the judiciary. Judiciary need to think of how it will deal with instances where the Chief Justice of India or other justices becomes hostage to possible CBI innuendo.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supreme court, diminished Context: The judiciary has created a crisis of institutional credibility for itself. Crisis situation for Judiciary: The Supreme Court of India is facing worst crisis of credibility since the Emergency. The quality of the court\u2019s reasoning, the inconstancy of its judgment, the abdication of its constitutional role in some cases, and is&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/supreme-court-diminished\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Supreme court, diminished<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704637571},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34036","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\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}