Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant is set to hold a series of bilateral engagements with senior judicial representatives from BRICS member states and partner countries as India hosts the BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum in New Delhi from September 4 to 6.
The high-level judicial conclave is expected to provide an important institutional platform for deliberations on strengthening cooperation among judiciaries, facilitating comparative legal dialogue and deepening engagement between courts across jurisdictions.
The proposed bilateral meetings assume significance against the backdrop of an increasingly interconnected legal and economic order, where questions of transnational commerce, digital governance, emerging technologies, investment protection and cross-border enforcement increasingly require sustained judicial dialogue.
The forum convenes top judicial figures from BRICS nations and partner countries, including Chief Justice Surya Kant for India, along with counterparts such as Igor Krasnov (Russia), Zhang Jun (China), Boulos Gahmy Iskander Boulos (Egypt), Mahube Betty Molemela (South Africa), Ayatollah Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i (Iran), Sunarto (Indonesia), and Mohammed Hamad Al Badi Al Dhaheri (UAE), alongside representatives from partner nations like Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan
The engagements will bring together the heads and senior representatives of judiciaries from BRICS countries and partner jurisdictions, creating an avenue for discussions on common challenges confronting modern justice-delivery systems and possible mechanisms for institutional collaboration.
Justice Surya Kant has, in recent weeks, consistently emphasised the importance of judicial cooperation and institutional capacity-building in an evolving multipolar world. His engagements with foreign judicial counterparts are expected to further this broader vision of strengthening mutual understanding between legal systems while respecting their distinct constitutional and jurisprudential traditions.
The BRICS judicial platform assumes particular relevance as the grouping expands beyond its original economic conception and increasingly becomes a forum for cooperation across multiple institutional domains. Judicial engagement, in this setting, can facilitate exchange of best practices in court administration, technological transformation, access to justice and adjudication of complex transnational disputes.
The forthcoming forum also follows Justice Surya Kant’s recent advocacy of stronger institutional mechanisms for judicial cooperation among BRICS+ jurisdictions. At the 11th BRICS+ Legal Forum in New Delhi, the CJI proposed the creation of a BRICS+ Judicial Fellowship, under which career judges could spend short periods observing proceedings and judicial practices in courts of other member jurisdictions.
He had also mooted the establishment of a shared jurisprudence repository, drawing upon India’s experience with the digitisation of judicial records and case law. Such a repository, he suggested, could enable courts in one jurisdiction to access judgments from another when confronted with comparable questions of law.
Justice Surya Kant had described the broader idea through the expression “Nyay Setu a bridge of justice, envisaging stronger institutional connectivity between diverse legal traditions. The concept seeks to transform judicial interaction from occasional diplomatic engagement into a more structured architecture of comparative legal learning and institutional trust.
The CJI has also linked the efficacy of judicial institutions with economic confidence and the broader rule-of-law framework. Addressing the BRICS+ Legal Forum, he argued that predictable adjudication, reliable enforcement of contractual obligations and institutional stability have a direct bearing on economic resilience and international investment.
The forthcoming Chief Justices’ Forum is therefore expected to extend this discourse from the legal fraternity to the highest levels of judicial leadership among participating jurisdictions.
The bilateral meetings are likely to facilitate an exchange of views on matters falling within the contemporary judicial mandate, including court modernisation, technological integration, access to justice, judicial education and mechanisms for cross-border legal cooperation.
Such engagement is particularly pertinent as courts increasingly confront disputes transcending territorial boundaries. International commercial arbitration, insolvency, digital transactions, artificial intelligence, data governance, climate-related litigation and enforcement of judgments are among the areas where comparative jurisprudence can assume considerable practical importance.
The forum also presents an opportunity for participating judiciaries to examine how different constitutional and legal traditions respond to common institutional pressures without compromising their respective legal identities.
For India, hosting the gathering places the Supreme Court at the centre of a wider conversation on judicial cooperation within the BRICS framework. The bilateral engagements led by CJI Surya Kant are consequently expected to complement India’s broader diplomatic and institutional outreach while reinforcing the judiciary’s role in fostering rule-of-law cooperation.
The September 4–6 gathering is thus poised to go beyond ceremonial judicial diplomacy. It comes at a time when the architecture of international cooperation is being recalibrated and when courts are increasingly called upon to address disputes shaped by globalisation, technological disruption and cross-border economic activity.
Against this backdrop, the BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum offers an institutional setting for judicial leaders to exchange jurisprudential experience, identify areas of common concern and explore durable mechanisms for cooperation—an approach that could strengthen both the efficacy of justice delivery and confidence in the rule of law across participating jurisdictions.
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