Just reassuring judicial succession

Just reassuring judicial succession

We welcome the appointment of Justice Ranjan Gogoi as successor to the incumbent Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, who retires on October 2. The placid passing on of the Chief Justice’s mantle to the senior-most judge after the sitting CJI marks institutional continuity and integrity. This is reassuring after the dysfunction manifest in the higher judiciary when four judges of the Supreme Court held a press conference in January this year decrying danger to democracy. It would be a mistake, however, to set aside as inconsequential such disruption of judicial convention, and the subsequent impeachment motion against the CJI by a section of MPs, who moved court to challenge the ruling by the chairman of the House to disallow the motion, but withdrew.

The furious action of the duck’s paddling feet below the surface propels the bird forward on the water. The serenity of the bird’s passage is no guide to the threshing and churning going on beyond what the naked eye can see. It would not be entirely outlandish to imagine that the four senior justices’ open appeal to the public against what they described as grave impropriety at their January press conference, and its response in the political sphere in the form of an impeachment motion against the sitting chief justice, had something to do with the modulation of subsequent judicial conduct. The court recommended names of judges for elevation to the Supreme Court that the government was not happy with, but the court persisted and the government acquiesced.

What Justice Gogoi’s appointment attests to is the ability of Indian democracy’s institutional infrastructure to withstand strain. This is good. But even better would be a system of appointing judges in which the executive and the legislature play a role, instead of the judiciary renewing itself.