The sequential trinity of annual timelines—independence day, the Supreme Court’s platinum jubilee and the Constitution’s forthcoming 75th year—is the coming together of an epic moment in India’s jurisprudential evolution.
Democratic India, judicial India and social India share a mutually exclusive relationship chiselled by the contours of jurisprudence through a monumental text, the Constitution. The interpretative bridge of judges has always connected and balanced pre-constitutional ideas with the ever-changing Indian society, making this country the largest functional democracy. The 50th Chief Justice of India is a shining representation of that role in this harmonious trifecta, and he shall be sitting on the highest chair of justice for the last time tomorrow.
The text of the Constitution and the functional context of the enduring Indian social fabric find their cementing bond at the sacred halls of justice. This was played out in extraordinary style with Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud’s court dispensing justice according to the law. The junior Chandrachud’s second coming of his own first is a constituent chain of legacies through a memorable genealogy.
If Justice Y V Chandrachud presided over an era that refined the constitutionalism of the basic structure, Justice D Y Chandrachud’s was one that defined the constitutionalism of a variety diffusing many ideas in the stream of national life. In both, the common current was the deepening of constitutionalism as an article of faith in judicial workings and a richness of jurisprudence.
If the 1980s was the awakening of India to a post-Emergency polity, 2022 was the recovery of a developing nation from the clutches of a raging pandemic. Challenges change in colour and content with the constitutional text and context engaging in a dialogue across generations. Both were periods of liberating and sparkling jurisprudence, with the social action propensities of the Constitution being harnessed through creative judgements and the ever-glowing reminder that it is the strength of the Constitution that inspires confidence in a functional democracy.
Comparative indices often hoodwink the contemporary by its weight of matching needs. The India of 2022-24 was indeed different and the Constitution could not be stagnated. Opinions in social media positioned their pot-shots and a clash of ideologies came to the fore. However, the judicial mind was moulded in measures of conscience, restraint, inclusivity, reform and a pointed approach to contextualising India in the global legal map of arbitration.
The Right to Privacy (2017) judgement was a resounding start. It shot off a series including the judgements relating to Article 370, electoral bonds, royalty on minerals, private property rights, the statute-basic structure nexus and many that will come to chart judicial discourse in the decades ahead. The judicial pen was a sheet anchored in the societal stirrings of our times, capturing legal ideas that were informed by a characteristic depth of reasoning. Its product was not just a factual decision, but a woven profusion of ideals that elevated constitutionalism to new levels of balance with a prognosis that connects past, present and future ‘isms’.
Versatility is not just for the multi-dimensional textures of legal arguments and facts, but is also a virtue for judicial craftsmanship to ensure that the rule of law neither petrifies life nor becomes inflexibly mulish (modified words of Justice V R Krishna Iyer). If the law had to speak through judgements, the flexibility of comprehension matters.
In these years of visual shorts on the media, the language in judgements must appeal to the reader, but not be denuded of its rightful place in the judicial world of precedents. Balancing the two concepts were seemingly arduous, but was accomplished with singularity of focus. Notably, this versatility also extended to knowledge, enriching inclusive internship programmes that were aspirational for the starters.
Public opinion does power a democracy, but with time it has turned into a relay race of decibel heights and hollow shells. The range is as bewildering as the origin and motivation of such campaigns; the best antidote was to make the work speak and judgements flow than to leave it open for agitational chaos. This committed work ethic will be the definitive pointer to the years of Justice D Y Chandrachud on the bench. An unrelenting pursuit of writing judgements with élan was punctuated by judicial sensitivity that kept the top court sitting late into evenings dealing with cases that shook a nation’s conscience.
Bequeathing legacies in an age of short-termism is akin to turning the tide. Permanence does not describe the public memory of discredit that propels short-sighted verdicts about a judge. But this was different; a voyage that began at the dawn of a new millennium in 2000 strove to make the janmabhoomi of Mumbai as significant as the karmabhoomi of Delhi and the dharmabhoomi of India.
Steeped in the arc of legal scholarship, intellectualism saw its high noon in a tenure that seemed to have only been inaugurated yesterday. “The greatest time will be when another Chandrachud, the son, will be the Chief Justice of India,” proclaimed a visibly moved senior advocate Fali Nariman while speaking at a webinar in 2021. Evocative emotions apart, let us hope that the bar and the bench will ensure that his craftsmanship will flourish beyond tomorrow.
(Views are personal)
S Vaidhyasubramaniam | Vice-Chancellor and Tata Sons Chair Professor of management, SASTRA (Deemed) University
Amrith Bhargav | Advocate and legal research scholar