Hon’ble Chief Justice of India Dr. D. Y. Chandrachud, Hon’ble Chief Justice of England and Wales the Right Hon’ble Lord Burnett of Maldon, President Commonwealth Lawyers Association Peter Maynard, dignitaries on the dais and off the dais, colleagues, friends, ladies, and gentlemen.
How cosmos brings people in our life or that of an institution and nation has much more in it, then we can ever know. That is perhaps one of the unanswered questions, which is only decoded after the period is over. During the period we can only make efforts to decipher and with awe watch the head of the institution, leading from the top.
Hon’ble Chief Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud was designated as Senior Advocate by the Bombay High Court in 1998 and appointed as the Additional Solicitor General of India in the same year. He was elevated as judge of Bombay High Court and thereafter as Chief Justice of High Court of Allahabad. He was appointment to Supreme Court on May 13, 2016, and on November 9, 2022, was appointed as the 50th Chief Justice of the largest democracy in the world. A position that he holds with great dignity, vibrancy, majesty and fervor during the uncommon times.
Chief Justice Chandrachud has authored several outstanding and path breaking judgments of Supreme Court on all most all issues, as they continue to arise. Right of Privacy, Free Speech, Personal Liberty, Gender Justice for women in armed forces, Intersectional violence, Labour, Floor test for election, distribution of essential supplies and services during pandemic, Affirmative action, Disability rights, Commercial Law, Insurance Law, Insolvency Law and many other subjects have been magnificently dealt by him
His legal statesmanship is reflected in every judgment. Criminal law should not become a tool for selective harassment of citizens. Sexual Harassment at workplace is an affront to the fundamental rights of a woman to equality. There can be no gamble with the environment: heads I win, tails you lose approach is simply unacceptable; unacceptable if we are to preserve environmental governance under the rule of law. This statement led to the evolution of the environmental rule of law principle.
His very powerful dissent relating to the biometric project – Adhaar is labelled in academic circles as stirring dissent, fiery dissent, historic dissent, stinging dissent, lone yet powerful dissent. His dissent had not to wait, for a day in the future when it could be duly recognised. The reasoning given by him has been relied by Chief Justice Sykes in striking down Jamaican National Identification and Registration Act and has become part of global migration of ideas, by finding fertile soils far from home and bloom into full richness as one academician penned.
Chief Justice Chandrachud is a profound speaker and has delivered numerous addresses, particularly at conferences organized by United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, International Labour Organizations, United Nations Environmental Program, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and several premier International and National Institutions and events organized by civil societies.
As Chief Justice of India he has taken great initiative by making full use of technology for the institution. After his taking over, suddenly we have seen the big machine moving. E-Committee, Virtual Court, National Judicial Data Grid, Inter – Operable Criminal Justice System, e-Filling Software 3.0, e-Payments, e-Sewa Kendr, National Service and Tracking of Electronic Process, Judgment Search Portal, Live Streaming of Court proceedings, Transcription of live court proceedings, case categorization and finally Neutral Citation. His strength to take positive decisions to enable the institution is unparallel and this I say after having personally interacted with almost 35 Chief Justices of India.
All this is but a small spark of what Chief Justice Chandrachud is. There is no other avid thinker, intellectual giant and a passionate legal mind, who is pushing and pulling the highest legal institution into the next level, with all that is at his command, to meet the challenges of legal issues arising as a result of us all being in a VUCA world - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Globalization 4.0, Fourth Education Revolution and Legal Revolution 5.0. We are fortunate to have him with us, at the second Soli Sorabjee Memorial Lecture.
Hon’ble the Chief Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud
