Judicial activism - who wins?
The judiciary is the most powerful, least dangerous, most transparent, least secretive sanctuary of humanist, compassionate, curial process and people’s justice. However, the inalterable and inamendable paramountcy of fundamental rights has often been expounded – without precedent or precision, and with the immediate objective of latifundist, feudalist strangling of social justice. What can the nation do if the judiciary has a fancy to ‘sip every flower and change every hair’?
The basic structure doctrine, a constitutional serendipity and bench discovery, remained vague, vagarious and jurisprudentially jejune, being the uninhibited product of judicial ipse dixits. Indira Gandhi- in her socialistic legislative populism or finer vision – well meaning nationalization schemes and public sector progressivism that would suffer judgocratic victimization, was seared by possible authoritarian anti-socialism of some senior lordships, now armed with an ill defined, even dubious power to strike down every unorthodox legislative measure, using the arcane basic structure ‘V weapon’, a curial invention no one except the Indian Supreme Court could reveal or use. If the rule of law be vulnerable to judicial ukase, statutory exercises could become the vanishing point of jurisprudence.
In a tragic obiter dictum the New World Economic Order has re-colonized India and compliant governments and other victims of multinational corporations have in the words of Nobel prize winner and firmer world bank policy maker Stiglitz, promoted ‘briberisation’ and demolished the socialist-democratic spirit of the constitution embodied in the swadeshi and self reliant institutions that are undergoing a toxic, traumatic import invasion. The role of the judiciary has aggravated the situation and made the right to life and livelihood an illusion for the masses. In short the court has forgotten the judicial imperative of upholding the socialistic democratic character of our republic. The Indian judiciary’s social philosophy is no exception and power without challenges and accountability tends to make this instrument authoritarian. A non negotiable monopoly of interpretative jurisdiction truncates parliamentary democracy. Arbitrary power is a menace to human rights. No executive can function; no legislature can debate for fear that a writ will undo everything, even if no case pends challenging the offending action allergic to the orthodoxy or class anathema of their ‘Lordships’. The judiciary holds with none to question or correct their pronouncements. When the fundamental law of the land had secret dimensions the highest court incarnates an imperium in robed authority. It’s a rather unhappy imbroglio.
Read the complete article by V.R. Krishna Iyer
The basic structure doctrine, a constitutional serendipity and bench discovery, remained vague, vagarious and jurisprudentially jejune, being the uninhibited product of judicial ipse dixits. Indira Gandhi- in her socialistic legislative populism or finer vision – well meaning nationalization schemes and public sector progressivism that would suffer judgocratic victimization, was seared by possible authoritarian anti-socialism of some senior lordships, now armed with an ill defined, even dubious power to strike down every unorthodox legislative measure, using the arcane basic structure ‘V weapon’, a curial invention no one except the Indian Supreme Court could reveal or use. If the rule of law be vulnerable to judicial ukase, statutory exercises could become the vanishing point of jurisprudence.
In a tragic obiter dictum the New World Economic Order has re-colonized India and compliant governments and other victims of multinational corporations have in the words of Nobel prize winner and firmer world bank policy maker Stiglitz, promoted ‘briberisation’ and demolished the socialist-democratic spirit of the constitution embodied in the swadeshi and self reliant institutions that are undergoing a toxic, traumatic import invasion. The role of the judiciary has aggravated the situation and made the right to life and livelihood an illusion for the masses. In short the court has forgotten the judicial imperative of upholding the socialistic democratic character of our republic. The Indian judiciary’s social philosophy is no exception and power without challenges and accountability tends to make this instrument authoritarian. A non negotiable monopoly of interpretative jurisdiction truncates parliamentary democracy. Arbitrary power is a menace to human rights. No executive can function; no legislature can debate for fear that a writ will undo everything, even if no case pends challenging the offending action allergic to the orthodoxy or class anathema of their ‘Lordships’. The judiciary holds with none to question or correct their pronouncements. When the fundamental law of the land had secret dimensions the highest court incarnates an imperium in robed authority. It’s a rather unhappy imbroglio.
Read the complete article by V.R. Krishna Iyer
posted by Prashant at 11:45 AM
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