If we had a legal culture where the judgments of the Supreme Court were subjected to unsparing and rigorous *legal* criticism, this whole controversy over "remote-controlled judges" may not have happened. (1/n)
livelaw.in/we-felt-that-f…
livelaw.in/we-felt-that-f…
The surest way to check "judgment by remote control" is to have a culture where judges are held accountable for the quality of their reasoning. It then becomes far more more difficult to reverse-engineer perverse judgments. (2/n)
Instead, since the rise of PIL, our obsession with outcomes over reasoning has brought us to a situation where there is virtually no analysis of how a judge got to a conclusion, and vague notions of "substantive justice" rule the roost. (3/n)
Combined with a culture of hagiography (with which a large part of the legal academy is complicit), you have a situation where judges have virtually no check on how they're doing what they're doing. (4/n)
For example: you may agree or disagree with the Aadhaar majority judgment. But whether you agree or disagree with the outcome, the reasoning was execrable in parts, and non-existent in other parts. Topped up with that "to be dictated" line. (5/n)
But how many pieces have you seen in the last two months that seriously get to grips with the majority judgment, and scrutinise the reasoning? How many of them have come from respected legal academics, who are free of the biases that the lawyers in the case (like me) have? (6/n)
Until we create that legal culture, these kinds of allegations of "remote control" are going to be doing the rounds frequently. When you can't see the reasons in the judgment - whether rightly or wrongly - you will supply them from elsewhere. (7/n)
So yeah. Basic point: stop the hagiography. Challenge judges. Move out of that Article 21 comfort zone where vaguely nice-sounding phrases about the right to life substitute for rigorous legal reasoning. Start criticising bad judgments even when the outcome is "good." etc. (8/8)
