The Supreme Court’s fault lines

BOOK REVIEW

- SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

The Indian Constitution has turned 75 this year. Political leaders of any consequence, editorial writers, legal scholars, and public intellectuals, renowned or otherwise, have had much to say about this momentous occasion.

But the main interpreter and guardian of that “holy book of our Republic,” as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly called it, the Supreme Court of India, which is also of the same vintage, has not received such attention. Its various judgments and arguments have been frequently commented upon, but the institution as a whole, its dramatis personae and its overall approach have not been comprehensively analysed. Hence the volume under review is a welcome addition to the literature, however limited its coverage (by design) and partial its approach (by default) may be.

Justice S Muralidhar, a former chief justice of Odisha with a 17-year career as a member of the higher judiciary is the editor of the volume. The 25 contributors constitute a galaxy of legal luminaries: Retired judges A P Shah, Madan Lokur, and K Chandru; practising advocates Indira Jaisingh, Arvind Datar, Raju Ramachandran, and Gopal Subramaniam; legal scholars Gautam Bhatia and Faizan Mustafa; and even a noted journalist, P Sainath. Some of them often grace the media opinion spaces.

But that list is not representative of the entire judicial ecosystem.