Learning from the lives of judges

The life stories of Supreme Court judges, close to a span of forty years, through biographical sketches of how they had come to occupy the pinnacle position in judiciary will definitely make an absorbing reading. This is all the more so when autobiographies by judges or other biographies of them by other commentators are acutely few, though their unbiased judgments on issues of public importance had drawn accolades across the country and abroad.

The book under review by George H.Gadbois, Jr, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Kentucky, US, attempts to execute three tasks. One is to provide a brief biographical essay for each of the 93 men who served on the apex court from 1950 through mid-1989 and the second is to account for why and how theywere chosen and to the extent feasible the selection milieu. The third is to paint a collective portrait of them, paying specific attention to changes in the background characteristics of the judges over the four decades.

Personal interaction

The author's audacity is visible throughout his voluminous work as the contents of his biographical essays were gleaned from tête-à-tête with the judges as 68 were alive when the study was made in 1983 and 1988 and he was able to meet with all save four. The rest he either met or corresponded with widows, children or with other relations. The 40 years are divided into two spans—from 1950 to 1970 and from 1971 to 1989. The reason is that the Executive, after largely conceding to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) the power to select judges during the first 20 years sought after 1970, to retrieve some of that power. Afterwards, the selection power was shared between the CJI and the Executive and the selection criteria too underwent some changes.

Assertive Executive

When S..M. Sikri became Chief Justice of India in January 1971, the Executive asserted the powers clearly bestowed upon it by the Constitution and initiated the names of those it wanted on the Supreme Court. There were little changes in the backgrounds and prior careers of the new judges. They continued to be selected from the ranks of senior high court judges and brought as much as experience to the office as earlier appointees, the author avows, adding that the most compelling factor in most of these appointments was having patrons who were close to the Prime Minister. “So this was not court-packing in the conventional sense. But, no matter by whom chosen, few would argue that a Khanna, a Mathew, a Mukherjea, or a Chandrachud were not excellent appointees”, the author declares with panache. The author's biographical sketches of Justice H.R.Khanna and Justice V.Krishna Iyer highlighting the lofty principles of serving judiciary with exemplary courage and with a clear conscience for the weal of the weakest and the poorest deserve keen study by social activists and general public alike.

Post-retirement jobs

The author adverts to post-retirement race for sinecure by judges particularly when governments of the day, both at the Centre and in States, seek their instrumentality for heading one Commission or another. All said and done, the author is not off the mark when he concludes that “background differences notwithstanding, all brought to the Supreme Court, a reputation for integrity and rectitude and left with that reputation intact. They served their nation well. India would not be the vibrant democracy it is without them”. A biographical book on such judges is definitely an invaluable vade-mecum.