The display of urgency is enormously welcome. A report in this paper has revealed that Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj has written to chief justices, urging them to send in their recommendations for filling up vacancies, current and anticipated, in the Supreme Court and high courts. Setting a time limit, as the minister has done for their recommendations, hints at an impatience long overdue. Filling up the empty places on the bench will contribute to a justice process less threadbare for litigants in the 27 million cases still pending in our courts, according to a recent confession by the chief justice of India. But perhaps it is possible in this moment to aspire to even more than that. As the ministerial missive wings its way, jurists, lawyers, parliamentarians and concerned citizens must join the project. It’s time to talk more seriously about judicial reform.In our country, the judiciary has gathered around its institution a special kind of prestige. With the political executive and legislature losing their sheen, and with public trust in these institutions dimming, the courts have stepped into the breach. They have taken up the public cause, often nudging other institutions to deliver, many times haranguing them to do so. The reason why judicial activism has been seen to be a force for the good, even as it is sometimes criticised for usurping a mandate that is not its own, is this: in these cynical times, the judiciary has retained its credibility. But its special status also casts on it the greater responsibility to be more open, more transparent in its workings. We need to revive the discussion, now shelved, on the National Judicial Commission, for instance.Not only must vacancies be filled, they must be filled through a more transparent process. Transfers and promotions of judges must be invested with more openness as well. The proposed Commission was to be set up for this purpose, it was also to frame a code of ethics for judges. In its best version, it was to institute clear and codified guidelines, in consonance with constitutional values, to govern such decisions. Let’s re-invigorate that idea, and ensure that it is not buried under procedural wrangling and/or plain institutional inertia once more.
