Opportunity in crisis: Judiciary should initiate reforms from within

The current moment should be seen less as a crisis and more as an opportunity to recover the Supreme Court's position

Speaking at the B G Verghese Memorial Lecture last week, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court A P Shah called for the higher judiciary in India to reform itself from within. He noted that a “deeper malaise afflicting the Indian judiciary” had been revealed in recent times. Significant markers of this malaise included the withdrawal of the Supreme Court from mechanisms of accountability, such as the Right to Information (RTI) Act, and the allegation, made by the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, that they were excluded from all weighty constitutional matters being decided by the court. Justice