It’s said if one wants to be remembered, one must either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud did both.
Over the last decade, I have appeared before several chief justices of the Supreme Court, yet Justice Chandrachud’s legacy is worth writing about.
He led probably the biggest revolution in the Indian judiciary post-independence—the e-courts system that has expanded access to justice to a considerable extent. Justice Chandrachud’s pivotal role in the process—first as chairman of the committee overseeing its implementation and later as the chief justice—was radical and crucial. He modernised and decentralised the judiciary in such a way that it now has the potential to fight plutocracy and monopolisation.
He was a democrat on the bench who tried to treat every lawyer equally and encouraged even the ‘ordinary’ ones. He was soft in his manners while being strong in intellect. He honoured the research that lawyers painstakingly do. I felt this when I argued for the petitioner in the Joseph Shine (2018) case before a Constitution bench, which led to the decriminalisation of adultery in India.
Justice Chandrachud was always hard-working. By one count, he wrote 93 judgements as chief justice—a record that’s possibly unbreakable. During his eight years in the Supreme Court, he wrote a total of 613 judgements.
Language is the light of the mind, said John Stuart Mill. And legal language is the light of an analytical intellect. Chandrachud had an effective language—simple, yet beautiful and powerful. He enjoyed the art of writing judgements. Those who unsuccessfully try to imitate the linguistic felicity of Justice V R Krishna Iyer with dictionary support should learn from the outgoing chief justice. He was a man of original thoughts that he articulated in a straightforward prose his own.
He wrote eloquently in defence of privacy in the Puttaswamy (2017) case. Decriminalisation of consensual same-sex relations in Navtej Singh Johar (2018) was another milestone. However, when it came to Supriyo vs Union of India (2023), his refusal to endorse same-sex marriage invited critiques from those who pleaded for it. In Davinder Singh (2024), the majority on the bench, speaking through Chief Justice Chandrachud, validated the sub-classification of communities for the purpose of reservation.
Constitutional socialism has been a contested idea in Indian judicial parlance. It’s no wonder the Chief Justice Chandrachud’s judgement in the Property Owners’ Association (2024) case has ignited an ideological debate on and off the bench. He disagreed with the socialist view on the Constitution’s Article 39(b) evolved by Justice Krishna Iyer in Ranganatha Reddy (1977) and pleaded for “economic democracy”. There could be two views on this. Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia’s defence of Krishna Iyer’s view in the same judgement, by way of dissent, marks the quality of intellectual deliberation on the topic.
A three-Judge bench headed by Chandrachud upheld the validity of the UP Madarsa Act. In the Aligarh Muslim University case, the majority view authored by Chandrachud overturned the verdict in Azeez Basha (1967) that had posed the twin requirement of a minority community establishing and administering an institution to be able to claim minority status. The liberal view in the judgement, delivered on his last working day, said it’s enough if an institution is established by a minority community. In the MediaOne (2023) case, he upheld the freedom of expression and directed the ban on the television channel to be lifted.
However, views might vary on the conclusions in some of Chandrachud’s judgements. Many support his views in M Siddiq vs Mahant Suresh Das (2019), popularly known as Ayodhya case, while many others oppose them. I have serious reservations about the conclusions. The verdict on electoral bonds in the Association for Democratic Reforms (2024) case has been significant, though it refused to reopen and investigate the secret deals political parties purportedly made for bond purchases.
By the time the case on Kashmir’s special status was decided, it became almost impossible to turn the clock back. Even then, a bad precedent that might enable the Centre to take away statehood in an abrupt way could have been avoided. Likewise, failure to fix a time limit for the restoration of statehood, by blindly relying on the Centre’s assurance, was a serious error.
Justice Chandrachud travelled a tough path during a difficult phase of majoritarianism. There could be criticism that he was less assertive than required on some occasions. The collegium’s decisions on judicial appointments were often meddled with by a recalcitrant executive, which could not be countered by the court. More importantly, CJI Chandrachud, as the master of the roster, failed to effectively prevent the prolonged incarceration of political prisoners, which led to tragic results under an illiberal state.
At the end, the Chandrachud legacy embodies some marvelous achievements on one hand, and some glaring aberrations on the other. However, as a judge who battled for transparency in private and public life, and as a man who tried to redefine India’s judicial imagination, his innings will be unforgettable.
Aristotle laid the foundations of modern biology, among other branches of knowledge. Will Durant, in The Story of Philosophy, tells us that Aristotle also made some egregious errors and concluded, “Indeed, Aristotle makes as many mistakes as possible for a man who is founding the science of biology.” The same approach is justifiable in the case of a chief justice who tried to change the foundations of Indian judicial reality.
Kaleeswaram Raj
Lawyer, Supreme Court of India
(kaleeswaramraj@gmail.com)