By Dr Rajeshwar Singh
In recent years, a troubling phenomenon has taken root in India: the media trial of judicial decisions. Judgments of constitutional courts are increasingly debated in television studios with partisan certainty, selective reading, and at times insinuations against judges themselves. What was once informed legal discussion is often reduced to headline-driven verdicts delivered outside the courtroom. This trend raises fundamental constitutional questions: who may legitimately interpret judicial decisions, what forms of criticism are permissible, why courts are vested with contempt powers, and whether sustained judicial silence in the face of such attacks serves constitutional ends.
These questions go to the core of the rule of law, the separation of powers, and democratic stability.
Discussion, interpretation, and constitutional boundaries
Judicial decisions are public documents, and discussion of them is protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Democratic discourse necessarily includes criticism of institutions, including courts. Indian constitutional law, however, has always recognised a crucial distinction between discussion and interpretation.
Discussion may be broad and participatory. Interpretation-explaining ratio decidendi, precedent value, constitutional impact, and enforceability-requires legal competence and intellectual discipline. When speculation is projected as legal interpretation, public understanding of law is distorted, and judicial reasoning is replaced by studio narratives untethered from the text of judgments.
A constitutional democracy cannot function if constitutional meaning is shaped by those who neither read judgments nor understand doctrine.
Judgments as public acts and judges as constitutional actors
Indian jurisprudence has consistently affirmed that fair, reasoned, and temperate criticism of judgments is legitimate. Courts do not claim infallibility, and intellectual disagreement is an essential part of constitutional development.
A constitutional boundary is crossed, however, when criticism shifts from judicial reasoning to judicial character. Allegations of bias, corruption, political allegiance, or mala fides-unsupported by evidence and raised outside constitutional mechanisms-are not critique. They are delegitimising attacks.
The distinction is fundamental: judgments may be questioned; the integrity of judges may not be impugned without due process. When this line is breached repeatedly, public faith in adjudication is eroded, regardless of the merits of the decision under discussion.
Contempt powers and their constitutional purpose
The Supreme Court of India and High Courts are designated Courts of Record under Articles 129 and 215 of the Constitution, with inherent power to punish for contempt, supplemented by the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.
This power exists not to protect personal prestige, but to safeguard the administration of justice. Courts possess neither military force nor financial control. Their authority rests on legitimacy and voluntary compliance. When judicial orders are portrayed as partisan or optional, the justice system itself is placed at risk.
Restraint, tolerance, and their limits
Indian courts have consistently emphasised restraint in exercising contempt jurisdiction. Judicial tolerance of criticism reflects constitutional maturity and respect for free expression. Harsh disagreement, even if uncomfortable, is not contempt.
Restraint, however, was never intended to become abdication. When tolerance is mistaken for weakness, it emboldens further attacks. A legal system that refuses to draw boundaries eventually loses the capacity to enforce any.
Judicial silence and institutional vulnerability
While restraint is a constitutional virtue, prolonged judicial silence in the face of sustained, coordinated, or malicious attacks carries institutional risk. Silence may be interpreted not as dignity, but as vulnerability.
Courts are not private individuals free to ignore slander. They are constitutional institutions whose authority depends on public confidence. When falsehoods and insinuations are allowed to circulate unchallenged, silence may inadvertently legitimise them.
Defending institutional dignity is not self-defence; it is constitutional responsibility. Measured responses-clarificatory observations, reasoned orders, or calibrated contempt action-may be necessary to reaffirm authority without suppressing legitimate critique.
The responsibility of the legal fraternity
Safeguarding judicial credibility cannot rest on courts alone. Senior advocates, retired judges, and the legal fraternity at large bear a parallel constitutional responsibility.
Senior members of the Bar possess both authority and credibility. Their informed intervention can clarify judgments, correct misinformation, and distinguish legal reasoning from political rhetoric. Silence from the Bar creates a vacuum that is filled by those with neither legal understanding nor institutional responsibility.
Retired judges, freed from adjudicatory constraints, are uniquely positioned to explain constitutional principles and judicial process without compromising independence. When they remain silent while courts are delegitimised, the public is left without authoritative voices capable of restoring balance.
The broader legal fraternity-academics, bar associations, and constitutional scholars-must also act as guardians of legal literacy. Allowing non-lawyers with vested interests to dominate legal discourse undermines not only courts, but the profession itself.
This is not advocacy for judicial infallibility. It is advocacy for constitutional literacy, without which public faith in adjudication cannot survive.
Public faith and the stability of the legal order
The judiciary is the final refuge for citizens seeking lawful redress. Persistent portrayal of courts as biased or compromised risks convincing citizens that justice is unattainable through law.
Loss of faith in courts does not produce reform; it produces disorder. Compliance with judgments declines, disputes migrate to the streets, and constitutional remedies lose legitimacy. Anarchy emerges not through rebellion, but through disbelief in institutions.
Comparative constitutional experience
Other democracies confront similar tensions. The United Kingdom abolished the offence of “scandalising the judiciary” through the Crime and Courts Act, 2013, relying on strong legal culture and professional discipline. The United States permits robust criticism of courts but restrains speech that poses a clear and present danger to the administration of justice. Jurisdictions such as Singapore and Canada retain doctrines allowing intervention where attacks create a real risk to public confidence in the judiciary.
The comparative lesson is consistent: no constitutional democracy tolerates sustained delegitimisation of courts disguised as free speech.
Media responsibility in a constitutional democracy
A free press is indispensable to democracy. Yet freedom does not imply substitution. Media scrutiny informs citizens; media adjudication supplants courts.
When studios pronounce verdicts on judicial motives or outcomes without engaging judicial reasoning, they do not strengthen accountability-they distort constitutional governance. Freedom of expression does not include freedom to convert opinion into authority.
Conclusion
Judicial authority survives on confidence, not coercion. Free speech survives on responsibility, not excess. Courts must tolerate criticism, but they cannot absorb systematic erosion of their legitimacy in silence.
At the same time, the defence of judicial credibility cannot be left to judges alone. The Bar, the Bench, and the legal academy must speak-clearly, responsibly, and authoritatively-when constitutional institutions are misrepresented by those who neither understand law nor respect it.
The judiciary must be restrained, but it must not be mute. And the legal fraternity must not be passive while public faith in justice is put at risk.
—Dr Rajeshwar Singh is an MLA, UP Legislative Assembly. He is a former Enforcement Directorate officer and is a lawyer, and holds a Ph.D.
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