Public trust & public approval not same; trust demands fairness: CJI

Why in the News

The Chief Justice of India has said that public trust in the judiciary is not the same thing as public approval, because trust is not earned by giving people the outcomes they want but by ensuring fairness of process. The remarks answered concerns raised at the same event by senior counsel about the administrative reforms the judiciary needs in order to deal with challenges such as the appointment of judges. The stated position was that reform must be the rule, and that no institution can survive or take pride in remaining static. The tension is that the same address defended two internal mechanisms, judicial appointments through the Collegium and the handling of complaints against judges, while grounding institutional confidence in a court’s willingness to be examined, questioned and, where necessary, criticised.

What is the Collegium system?

1. What it is: The Collegium is the mechanism by which judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts are selected by judges themselves rather than by the executive.
2. Where it comes from: It has no textual basis in the Constitution, and was created by judicial interpretation of Articles 124 and 217 across the three judges cases of 1981, 1993 and 1998.
3. Composition: For a Supreme Court appointment it comprises the Chief Justice of India and the four senior most judges of the Court, whose recommendation then goes to the Union government for the warrant of appointment.
4. The failed alternative: The National Judicial Appointments Commission, created by the Ninety ninth Constitutional Amendment Act, 2014, was struck down by a five judge Constitution Bench in 2015, which restored the Collegium.

What does transparency mean for a court?

1. Not only open doors: Transparency is not simply a matter of open doors and public hearings, though it certainly includes those things.
2. The reasoning, not the result: It means the reasoning behind a decision, and not merely its result, can be examined by anyone who cares to look, including the very people the decision goes against.
3. A verdict without reasoning is not transparency: A court that announces its verdicts but keeps its reasoning to itself has not really been transparent, whatever else it may have done.
4. What the phrase demands: “Seen to be done” means a fair hearing conducted honestly in the open, and a system that remains willing to be examined on whether it has kept its own word.

How is public trust different from public approval?

1. The difference matters a great deal: A court does not earn trust by being liked, or by handing out the outcomes people wanted.
2. The test is the losing party: Trust is earned when the people who lost, who wanted an entirely different result, still walk away believing that the process which decided against them was fair.
3. Harder and more valuable: That is a far harder thing to earn than approval, and far more valuable than it.
4. What trust is for: Public trust is not decoration for the judiciary, and is the only currency in which authority is ever paid.

What was said on judicial appointments?

1. Reform as the standing rule: No institution can survive or take pride in remaining static, so reform is treated as a welcome step rather than a concession.
2. Limits of a public answer: Some questions may not be prudent to respond to from a public platform, and the answers to them are legal answers set in the historical background of how the Collegium developed and how successfully it has worked.
3. The record of appointments: There is hardly any impediment between the appointments by the Union of India and the recommendations of the Collegium, which itself indicates the kind of deliberation that goes into a final recommendation.

How are complaints against judges handled?

1. The internal mechanism: The mechanism the Supreme Court and the High Courts have developed for complaints against judges is described as robust, responsive and very timely.
2. The misuse risk: Given a choice, a judicial officer will invite a complaint at every stage, whether passing an interlocutory order, adjourning a case or passing a final decree.
3. The open question: Whether every such complaint should be brought onto a public platform or a website, or whether a strong internal mechanism should deal with it with complete objectivity and a dispassionate approach, is treated as a seriously debatable issue.
4. Not treated as settled: The mechanism is described as well established, and as always subject to reforms and qualitative improvements.

Why is criticism treated as compatible with institutional confidence?

1. Exposure keeps institutions clean: Recalling Justice Krishna Iyer, institutions do not stay clean by being shielded from scrutiny, and stay clean by being repeatedly exposed to it and repeatedly surviving that exposure.
2. The textbook proceedings: Suo motu proceedings concerning a National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook, which carried a chapter on corruption in the judiciary, became an occasion to consider the relationship between legitimate criticism and public confidence in the institution.
3. What the order said: The order reiterated that the judiciary, as an institution, is not and cannot be averse to criticism.
4. Why that follows: A court cannot seek the confidence of the public by placing itself beyond scrutiny, and must remain willing to be examined, questioned and, where necessary, criticised.

Challenges to public trust in the judiciary

1. Opacity of the appointment process: The Collegium publishes its resolutions but not the material or the comparative assessment behind a name, so the standard of examinable reasoning is weaker for appointments than for judgments. Eg. Reiterated recommendations have been left unacted by the government, with no published reason recorded on either side.
   The Fix: Publish an anonymised assessment memorandum with every recommendation, recording seniority, disposal record and the ground for any supersession.
2. The internal complaints procedure has no statutory footing: Complaints against judges are handled under a procedure the judiciary framed for itself, so its outcome rests on institutional discipline rather than on law. Eg. Removal remains the only statutory route, under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, and no Supreme Court judge has ever been removed through it.
   The Fix: Give the internal procedure statutory backing with defined timelines and a published outcome summary that names no complainant.
3. Pendency erodes trust faster than any single verdict: A litigant who waits years for a hearing experiences the process as unfair regardless of how the case is eventually reasoned. Eg. Cases pending before the district judiciary are counted in crores on the National Judicial Data Grid.
   The Fix: Publish court wise disposal and case ageing data against listed targets, so delay is attributable to a court rather than to the system in general.
4. Vacancies outrun appointments: A sanctioned strength that is never filled turns an appointment mechanism into a bottleneck whatever its design. Eg. High Court vacancies have run into hundreds of posts for years together.
   The Fix: Fix a time limit for each stage from High Court proposal to warrant of appointment, with any delay recorded against the stage that caused it.

Conclusion

The address settles nothing about how judges are appointed or how complaints against them are decided, and it was not meant to. What it does is state the standard the institution asks to be judged by, which is the fairness of the process rather than the popularity of the result. That standard is testable only against the things the judiciary itself controls and publishes. The concrete thing to watch is whether the two mechanisms defended here acquire published reasons and fixed timelines, since a standard of examinable reasoning applied everywhere except to the institution’s own administration is precisely the gap the criticism turns on.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “Constitutional morality is the fulcrum which acts as an essential check upon the high functionaries and citizens alike…” In view of the above observation of the Supreme Court, explain the concept of constitutional morality and its application to ensure balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability in India.”