The Concept of “Bias” in a Polyvocal Court
The existence of a multiplicity of judicial panels in the Supreme Court undermines institutional coherence, writes Gautam Bhatia.
It is important to begin this post with a clarification. On Monday, I wrote a blog post pointing out that the composition of the Constitution Bench scheduled to hear the case concerning the interpretation of S. 24 of the Land Acquisition Act raised some important issues, specifically concerning the powers of the Chief Justice as the “Master of the Roster.” The post was one among many public interventions that raised similar questions about the Bench. During the hearings of the case today, it is reported that Justice Mishra observed that “there are attempts in the media and social media to “malign” the institution by raising questions about the bench and CJI’s decision.” Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta agreed, and stated that “there is a pattern here, where a few days before a major case is heard, things are written on social media or web magazines raising certain objections, that are intended to influence the proceedings.” Another judge on the bench, Justice Vineet Saran, agreed with him.
As two Justices of the Supreme Court, and the Government’s second-highest ranking Law Officer have seen fit to hold forth from the bully pulpit against nameless “critics”, a few points need to be made in response, in addition to what has already been pointed out by Nitin Sethi. The first is that the composition of the Bench was made public this Saturday. The hearing was scheduled for today.
Unless the Solicitor-General believes that critics of the Court had divined the composition of the Bench in advance, and were only keeping their powder dry until it was formally announced, the only time that these objections could possibly have been raised was between Saturday and Tuesday, i.e., “a few days before the hearing.”
Secondly, the Supreme Court is a public institution in a democratic republic, that is committed to the principle of open justice. That the Court’s conduct will be subjected to rigorous public scrutiny is exactly how it should be. Critics of the Court put their names to what they write, take responsibility for their writing, and set out their arguments (along with the grounds on which they are based) openly and in the public domain, which is exactly how it is supposed to happen in a democracy.
The critics are, in fact, considerably more transparent than the subject of discussion, which is the allocation of benches by the Chief Justice – a process that is entirely opaque and discretionary.
And thirdly, the only pattern that is visible here is Supreme Court judges’ reaction to public scrutiny by shielding themselves in a cloak of defensiveness and self-righteousness, where we go straight from criticism to a “maligning” of the institution (and, by extension, an equation of individual judges with “the institution”). Readers will recall that this was exactly the reaction at the time of sexual harassment allegations against the Chief Justice – a reaction that, again, was supported by the highest law officers of the government.
With these preliminary points out of the way, I want to focus on one specific issue that was raised during oral arguments today: the issue of deciding bias. The issue arose out of the petitioners’ request that Justice Arun Mishra recuse himself from hearing the case. Much of the questioning on this point was led by Justice S. Ravindra Bhat; in particular, drawing on precedent from common law countries, Justice Bhat made a distinction between “pecuniary bias”, “personal bias”, and “intellectual bias”, and questioned whether “intellectual bias” alone was sufficient ground for a recusal; he also observed that in Indore Development Authority, Justice Mishra had only expressed a “view”, and could – in theory – be persuaded to change his mind. Senior Counsel Shyam Divan’s response to these questions can be read here, but in this post, I want to make a separate point: questions of bias and recusal cannot be adjudicated without paying close attention to the unique nature of the Indian Supreme Court as an apex Court: that is, its polyvocal character. To directly copy standards of bias that have been evolved in common law jurisdictions – as Justice Bhat’s line of questioning suggests – without paying attention to the Indian Supreme Court’s institutional character, is to essentially be making a category mistake.
Almost uniquely among the major English-speaking Apex Courts of the world, there exists in the Indian Supreme Court a massive numerical difference between the strength of the Court (34 judges) and the strength of benches hearing day to day cases (2 or 3 judges). The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, sits en banc (as a full Court) of nine Justices. The South African Constitutional Court sits en banc for the most part as well. The UK Supreme Court has twelve judges, that often sit in panels of five (but can also sit en banc or close to it for important cases, such as the recent prorogation judgment). Similar situations exist for the apex courts of Kenya, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. What this means is that these apex Courts possess an institutional coherence: judgments can be fairly said to express a “view of the Court” (as an institution). And if you want a judgment of the apex Court to be set aside, you have to – effectively – convince the same body to go back on its earlier view.
In India, however, we have a situation where within the highest judicial body, the existence of a multiplicity of judicial panels undermines institutional coherence, and creates a situation where the apex Court is effectively disagreeing with itself. This is what has happened in the present case: abstracting for a moment from the thicker context, what has happened is that two three-judge benches of the Supreme Court have taken diametrically opposite views on the same issue. Now the existence of thirty-four judges on the Supreme Court means that there is a ready solution to hand: send the issue to a bench that has a higher number of judges, in order to “resolve” the conflict.
Shorn of the legalese, what this effectively means is that within the highest judicial body, there is an internal appellate mechanism to deal with the problem of institutional incoherence, flowing from the Court’s unique structure. I use the word “appellate” in its ordinary sense; it is, obviously, not an “appeal” as that word is defined under Indian law, but it is basically a sui generis response to a situation where even within the apex Court, there are situations when conflicting views require a resolution in the interests of institutional coherence.
Once we understand this, however, it becomes clear that if the same judge is going to be present at both stages of the process, then this form of resolution becomes pointless.
This is why it is important to understand Mr. Shyam Divan’s argument that what this effectively amounts to is a judge adjudicating upon the correctness of his own judgment in “collateral” proceedings; it is not formally an appeal, but in every significantrespect, these latter proceedings are doing the work of an appeal. The source of the confusion is that – for understandable reasons – we continue to think of the Supreme Court as a unified body that speaks in one institutional voice, while the reality has moved very far away from this. A more accurate analogy would be with the European Court of Human Rights, where the same Court is divided into a “Chamber” and a “Grand Chamber.” Chamber judges and Grand Chamber judges are drawn from the same overall pool of ECHR judges: “The Grand Chamber is made up of the Court’s President and Vice-Presidents, the Section Presidents and the national judge, together with other judges selected by drawing of lots.” But: “When it hears a case on referral, it does not include any judges who previously sat in the Chamber which first examined the case.” (Emphasis Supplied)
The issue, therefore, is not – as Justice Bhat’s line of questioning suggests – about how we are to understand “bias” from common law precedent. The issue is an institutional one: if what we now have is a situation where the Supreme Court has thirty-four judges, hears cases in panels of two or three that end up disagreeing with each other, and the resolution to that disagreement is by a panel of larger strength, then it is clear that the only way if this system is to work at all is if the latter panel has fresh judges. The alternative – that the same judge (or judges) sit on the larger bench borrows from two incompatible worlds: the problem is caused because of our poly-vocal Court with its thirty-four judges, but the solution comes from a world in which there is still one institution that automatically speaks with one voice.
And of course, it is here that the role of the Chief Justice – as “Master of the Roster” – is a crucial one, as discussed in the last post; and it is here that the need for standards that guide that discretion in the establishment of benches become so crucial. The establishment of these standards, it bears repeating, is not because people are out to “malign” the Chief Justice, but to ensure that the uncanalised discretion that opens up the Chief Justice to malignant accusations is actually subjected to public and democratic norms.
[Disclosure: The author clerked with Justice Bhat (as he then was) at the High Court of Delhi, in 2014.]
Gautam Bhatia practices law in Delhi, and is the author of ‘The Transformative Constitution’, and ‘Offend, Shock, and Disturb’. He blogs about the Indian Constitution at indconlawphil.wordpress.com. where this article was originally published.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.