New Delhi: Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud has said judges, though not elected, have a very vital role to play because the judiciary has a “stabilising influence” in the evolution of societies which are rapidly changing with technology.
“I believe that judges have a very vital role to play, though we are not elected. We don't go back to the people every five years to seek their votes. But, there's a reason for that... I do believe that the judiciary, in that sense, is a stabilising influence in the evolution of our societies, particularly in something like our age which is so rapidly changing with technology,” the CJI said.
He was responding to the common criticism that unelected judges should not venture into the executive's domain. Speaking at a discussion on Comparative Constitutional Law, the Chief Justice of India said the judges are the voice of something which must subsist beyond “the vicissitudes of time”.
As part of a cultural and social background, the CJI said that the courts have become focal points of engagement between civil society and the quest for social transformation.
“In so many societies across the world, you will find that the rule of law has given way to the rule of violence... The key to a stable society is the ability of judges in that sense, to use the Constitution and their own platform as a platform for dialogue, as a platform for reason, as a platform for deliberation,” he said.
The CJI also dealt with the principle of affirmative action by the state and said it was meant to achieve broader equality and was not against the right to equality.
“The argument against affirmative action is by having quotas in education, in employment and in political representation, you are essentially choosing people who are less meritorious, but this is an area which we have worked on considerably,” he said.
“If you look at equality merely as formal equality, then by being colour blind, or by being blind to the histories of discrimination, which our people have suffered, you're essentially giving weight to the social, cultural and economic capital, which the privileged have acquired over generations,” he added.
In order to have a level playing field for those communities, who have suffered centuries of discrimination, affirmative state action is not an exception to equality, but is a reflection of the principle of substantive equality, he said.
He defended his minority verdict on some aspects pertaining to same-sex marriages and said he stood by it as the judicial opinions are sometimes a “vote of conscience and a vote of the Constitution”.
On October 17, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by the CJI unanimously refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage, saying there was “no unqualified right” to marriage. However, the CJI and Justice S K Kaul were in minority on the issues of right to form civil union and right of adoption of queer couples.
