Something About The Law

Union law minister Veerappa Moily on Monday asked the judiciary to restrain itself from admitting PILs and said “unrealistic judicial activism on the part of the judges is one of the main reasons for increased Naxalism in the country”.

Moily said his concern was that when judges admit PILs and deliver judgments, “they should be realistic and go by the ground realities instead of believing arguments”. He echoed Congress leader Dijvijay Singh’s on “Salwa Judum” and said it was a blunder committed by the state government to deal with the Naxal menace. (link)

I am not sure how judges can “go by ground realities instead of believing arguments.” If the Minister has a problem with judicial activism per se he really should not be advocating that judges disbelieve arguments (the role of the traditional legalistic judge is precisely this: to adjudicate on matters that parties with locus come to it for, with an impartial outlook, no matter how sentimentally disheartening the outcome may be). It is because judges believe the arguments brought to them are somehow false/fabricated/inadequate and insist that they have a better way of arriving at “ground realities” do they enter into the scheme of judicial activism per se.

What the Minister probably has a problem with is the result of this particular instance of judicial activism. Which is, again, one of the dangers of the process: like a faulty machine, it gives sometimes-good and sometimes-bad results. When people launch a tirade against activism, they should focus their energies more towards reducing the chances of “bad” outcomes. The next question, of course, is what a “bad” outcome is. This will form the subject of a larger, more detailed post.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.