New Delhi: The Indian judiciary has played an important role in shaping the moral backbone of democracy by explaining the text orders of the Constitution, which gave liveness and dynamics to the country’s governance structure, Justice Surya Kant said, who will become the 53rd Chief Justice of India in November.Speaking to legal scholars and students at Seattle (US), he said that in the Kesavanand Bharti case, SC established the ‘Basic Structure Principle’, stating that while Parliament could amend the Constitution, it could not change its original identity.Justice Kant said, “When the courts act to empower powerless, are based in constitutional text and moral clarity, they do not leave democracy – they deepen it.”He said that the active attitude of the judiciary has often filled legislative or executive Voids in advancing rights and justice, also, many times, has been criticized for encroaching on the policy domain, which is traditionally reserved for the selected branches of the government, he said. “This stress invites the deepest investigation into the validity and boundaries of judicial intervention in constitutional democracy,” he said.He said that principles like rule of law, separation of powers and judicial reviews are considered unacceptable. He said that this principle was not in unprecedented, text at that time, but in a moral reading of democratic continuity, he said.He faced Bharti’s decision with the notorious Adam Jabalpur case, in which the government’s Draconian Dictat was introduced to “no rights to the citizens” during the emergency SC, and said that it was only following the Maneka Gandhi case after the end of the Emergency, that the right expansion of the rights was through the expansionary practices of the SC.“In this period, the SC has confirmed the dominance of the Constitution and underlined that its basic values, especially related to life and freedom, are unique and beyond compromising,” said Justice Kant.Explaining judicial freedom, he said that it incorporates the ability of intellectual and moral freedom, which is only beyond institutional autonomy.He said, “The inherent objective of the independence of the judiciary is that judges should be able to decide the dispute in front of them according to the law, uncontrolled by any other factor,” he said, involved in the system, “he said.
