Twin pillars

It is perhaps a reflection on the government of the day that the courts continue to become more and more central to public discourse. The Supreme Court and the high courts are setting the tenor for those who govern, for law and order personnel and, sometimes, for their own tribe as well. Last month, a former high court chief justice suggested that even as the media constantly needs the judiciary these days to enable it to stay free and function, the judiciary, too, needs the media some times to strengthen its hand.

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Last week, after the vice-president’s ferocious attack on what he saw as judicial overreach, the Times of India chose to rap Jagdeep Dhankhar for his strident criticism of the Supreme Court's landmark judgment in the case regarding the governor of Tamil Nadu. The editorial came even as criticism of the Supreme Court’s judgment was growing. Dhankhar had said that Article 142 of the Constitution was a “nuclear missile against democratic forces, available to the judiciary 24x7”. The paper said that the vice-president was departing from norms guiding those who hold largely ceremonial constitutional posts, and sugge