“Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done”. This is what Lord Hewart, the then chief justice of England, said while pronouncing the verdict in the case of Rex v Sussex Justices, in Sussex in 1924. A century later, this aphorism coming from a court of law in Sussex has become a law of sorts onto itself. 

With the executive and the legislative falling miserably short of public expectations by landing in one scandal after another, the sovereign people have been pinning high hopes on another vital organ of the state—the judiciary—for quite some time. In this day and age of information and communication technology, where the people have information and knowledge at their fingertips, even the hallowed chambers of law cannot escape public scrutiny. 

People and the fourth estate—the free media—split hairs over judgments coming from the court of law, which is actually good for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. If it is bad for the rule by law, then so be it. At a time when the image of the executive and the legislature has taken a huge beating, the judiciary is under tremendous strain to maintain the sanctity of state institutions. The final interpreter of the Constitution can shoulder this task of Himalayan magnitude only by keeping itself above controversies galore. 

As they say, action speaks louder than words. Talking about action, a division bench of the Supreme Court has issued a verdict in a case related to ancestral property, stating that daughters married before 1 Oct 2015 cannot lay claim to ancestral property. Through this judgment, the court has put to rest a long-pending dispute over ancestral property, at least for now.  

As indicated earlier, the onus is on the top court to remain squeaky clean by minimizing extraneous influence to the maximum possible extent. For quite some time, the judiciary has been courting controversy over the appointment of justices close to a party or the other. It is a given that such appointments increase the risk of miscarriage of justice that can lead to all sorts of unwanted consequences for the country and the people. 

Some lay people, including skeptics, predicting judgments based on the benches hearing the cases is no good tiding—neither for the judiciary, nor for the state as a whole. As the top court of the country continues to deal with piles and piles of important cases ranging from property disputes to the protection of national boundaries and more, here’s wishing that an infallible sense of justice prevails in the hallowed chambers, driven by international conventions, precedents, our customs, traditions, societal norms and values as well as our own charter.