The Hindu Business Line : Judicial traditions

AMONG the legacies of the British Rule, the hallowed judicial traditions governing the judges' behaviour on and off the Bench can be counted as the most salutary. It is to the great credit of the judiciary of those halcyon days that when it could afford to be as wayward as it liked with none to question it, it lived up to a stringent code of self-restraint.

The bygone traditions demanded that a person, once appointed a judge, kept himself "far from the madding crowd", resigning from membership of clubs, eschewing any public activity and leading an austere life.

Compare this with these remarks of the National Commission for the Reviewing of the Working of the Constitution: "There are some complaints that some judges, even Chief Justices, are not seen to keep a distance from centres of political powers which would be conducive to the image of their neutrality."

On the Bench, the judges of the British days desisted from making off-the-cuff, gossipy kind of observations, like garrulous lay persons, as some sort of a running commentary on the counsels' submissions, which were apt to cast doubts about their open mind. They confined themselves to eliciting clarifications on law or facts through precise and sober questions, and reserved their final opinions on the merits of the case for their scholarly judgments which, again, never presumed to give administrative and executive directions unrelated to the legal issues.

The National Commission says on present-day trends: "A few Judges, with an eye on populism, are showing injudicious liberalism... This... causes grave prejudice to public interest and administration of justice (making) affected parties, be they private litigants or public bodies, raise eyebrows and even voice muted suspicion on judicial motives."

The old traditions are central to the credibility and respect that the judiciary should command if it claims the right to be the pivot of the rule of law. From my limited enquiries, it would seem that they are not given the needed prominence in the curriculum of many Law Universities.

It is time those traditions which were exemplified by legendary Justices such as Maurice Gwyer and S. Varadachariar were ingrained in every one practising and administering law to arrest the rapid slide in judicial conduct.

B. S. Raghavan

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