Supreme Whispers
Author - Abhinav Chandrachud
PublisherPenguin, Rs 599
This book makes the decorated annals of the Supreme Court, to a certain extent, more accessible to a lay reader, says KALYANEE RAJAN
Justice is an elusive concept: It is variable, fluid at its best, and its applicability and actuality depends on several minutiae in each instance. In a country fraught with pluralities of all possible kinds, justice inevitably acquires as many hues and filters as there can be. India sat up and took note earlier in January this year when in an unprecedented press conference, four Supreme Court judges led by Justice Jasti Chelameswar laid bare their misgivings about the current state of the judiciary led by the incumbent Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. What was reinforced through the entire episode, was that the judiciary was perhaps the most crucial pillar of democracy in these times. Lawyer and writer Abhinav Chandrachud’s latest, extremely interesting book Supreme Whispers takes note of this moment in its detailed introduction. Just when the nation’s interest was piqued by the press conference to know more about the working and the making as it were of the most hallowed court of this country, Chandrachud’s Supreme Whispers stepped in as a welcome repository of information, which though somewhat dated, is still exceptionally relevant and insightful.
Supreme Whispers contains a detailed introduction titled ‘The Gadbois Interviews’ followed by six thematically arranged chapters. Interestingly, the roots of this book lie in a series of interviews with Supreme Court Judges conducted by an American scholar, George H. Gadbois Jr. The usually stern and grave personalities of the judges found an attentive and engaged scholar to pour forth their opinions about several things at once — the nature of their work, their equation with their colleagues, the composition and working of the court, the role of the executive government apart from their personal backgrounds, their aspirations and vision. These interviews were conducted by Gadbois Jr over numerous meetings spanning a decade. He managed to do about 116 interviews where more than 66 judges of the Supreme Court of India, nineteen of whom had held the covetous post of the Chief justice of India. He also included allied sources like senior politicians, senior lawyers practicing at the Supreme court, other members of the court staff, and relatives of deceased judges. Gadbois’ copious and meticulous notes taken during these interviews were passed on by him to the writer and Bombay High Court Lawyer, Abhinav Chandrachud, who hails from an illustrious family which has produced several Judicial Luminaries, including his Grandfather Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud, who was the sixteenth CJI, and his father, Dhananjay Yeshwant Chandrachud who is a sitting judge at the Supreme Court. Combining his training acquired during his PhD work at Stanford University Law School with practical knowledge handed over through generations, Chandrachud in this second book (the first was Republic of Rhetoric: Free Speech and The Constitution of India, Penguin 2017) strives to analyse and bring to the fore an insider’s view of the Supreme Court — a space as dynamic and full of upheavals as its contrasted public image of grave stillness, seclusion and absolute state of orderliness. The six chapters open up the several sites of contestations within, the infusion of politics both subtle and above board, the legal culture within the court, the process of appointments and work-distribution, its own thorough procedure of decision-making, and above all, the supremely guarded lives and times of the judges who are at all times expected to preside over fellow humans from the pedestal.
It is evident that even in the best of times, such a book is tremendously difficult to write. There is an enormous potential of such a project firing controversies and breach of confidentiality, admittedly it is the “supreme” law which binds the nation state and guards its sanctity with respect to its duties towards its subjects as well as the mundane inter-relationships between the subjects themselves, and chinks or crevices if any in the heart of the highest court of law need to be treated with utmost delicacy. Abhinav Chandrachud’s narrative and analysis treads this edge of a sword path with envious precision: While he has classified the contents of the interviews thematically, the several sub-sections of each chapter add extra layers to the discussion waiting for a discerning reader to reach the crux of each revelation therein. Many potentially debatable statements made by the Supreme Court Judges in their free-wheeling interviews are shrewdly denied further analysis while they are utilised to arrive at general, broad deductions. The book contains a 17 pages long introduction which neatly holds the book together apart from laying a solid foundation for the six chapters that follow, titled ‘Judicial Rivalries’, ‘Disagreement without Dissent’, ‘Special Leave, a Special Burden’, ‘Decliners’, ‘The Fictional Concurrence of the Chief Justice’ and ‘Criteria for Selecting Judges’ respectively, along with coloured plates of some of the judges and personalities mentioned in the book, and finally a whopping 86 pages of fastidiously compiled end notes.
The first chapter titled ‘Judicial Rivalries’ runs into 44 pages and discusses the “intense professional, ideological and personal rivalries” between the judges of the Supreme Court, especially those between the CJI and the senior most judge or the second in command or the Puisne judge, on issues such as the true role of a judge whether as arbiter of disputes or as an activist, matters relating to succession, post-retirement positions or in general, a day-to-day distribution of work at the court. In Chandrachud’s words, “the stories of these rivalries and disagreements are immensely valuable…because they stand in stark contrast to the general lack of dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision-making…” The relatively shorter 21 page long second chapter titled ‘Disagreement without Dissent’, through specific case studies reveals a “puzzling lack of dissent in the day-to-day decision-making of the court” despite the dazzling display of intense rivalries between the judges. A similarly short third chapter titled ‘Special Leave, a Special Burden’, is very informative as it traces the history and development of the Special Leave Petition or the SLP as it is popularly called, through the colonial times of the Privy Council to the current day Supreme Court and the growing backlog of such SLPs pending before the court. It also sheds light on the growing absence of dissenting judgments being written at the Supreme Court due to a severe shortage of time. The fourth chapter titled ‘Decliners’ makes a case for those lawyers and judges who have declined “offers of elevation” to the Supreme Court on various counts such as varying pay package and the contrast in prestige as chief justice of a prominent High Court versus that of a Supreme Court Judge. Chandrachud deserves rousing accolades for giving a fresh lease of life to the extensive Gadbois interviews.
