Attorney General for India R Venkataramani has said that the Indian judiciary should remain intellectually porous to comparative and international judicial developments, even as it pursues a project of swadeshi institutional renewal that seeks to reinforce an indigenous constitutional tradition.
Speaking at a felicitation organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) in the honour of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Friday, the AG spoke about the intersection of globalisation, constitutional evolution, and the judiciary’s role in an era defined by rapid technological and social transitions.
He commended the CJI’s institutional stewardship, particularly his tenure at the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), and recalled the substantive interventions made by Justice Kant at global judicial conferences, including those in California and Sri Lanka, calling them a symbol of an outward-looking yet rooted judicial vision. The AG suggested that these engagements reflected an approach that drew from comparative experiences without diluting the primacy of India’s constitutional identity.
Noting that the pursuit of indigenous or swadeshi jurisprudence must not translate into an insular judicial posture, AG Venkataramani said that Indian courts have historically benefited from comparative perspectives.
The transnational legal principles have enriched Indian constitutional adjudication on privacy, human dignity, and due process, particularly in landmark cases such as KS Puttaswamy, Maneka Gandhi, and Vishaka, he noted, adding that the dialogic nature of constitutionalism required the courts to remain attentive to persuasive value from other jurisdictions, even as they crafted doctrines uniquely suited to Indian constitutional text, structure, and societal realities.
AG Venkataramani said the judicial systems today operate in a world marked by unprecedented mobility of people, data, technology, and ideas, increasingly transcending sovereign regulatory control. In this emerging age of new technologies, issues of algorithmic governance, artificial intelligence, cross-border data flows and digital constitutionalism require doctrinal frameworks that are simultaneously indigenous and globally informed, he noted.
In this backdrop, the Indian judiciary should adopt a calibrated approach by remaining open to external influences while exercising constitutional discernment in determining what aligns with India’s legal culture, structural constitutionality, and democratic values. This would allow the Indian courts to evolve without capitulating to doctrinal mimicry or judicial isolationism.
Speaking about the persistent challenge of case management and docket congestion, the AG said that improvements in judicial efficiency must go hand-in-hand with improving the physical and environmental conditions of courtrooms.
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