When I was a young law student, I spent a couple of weeks in New Delhi interning under Justice J.S. Khehar (as he then was). While he seemed quite busy, there was very little that I could help him with at the time - this likely still holds true today. In any case, he seemed content to let me browse through his vast personal library for the duration of my time there.
I have since lost the notebook that I had maintained during that internship, but I still remember the days I spent looking for an answer in that library to something that had bothered me since I first learnt of it. Bear in mind that this was also the time that I was obsessed with the Constitution of India and fancied becoming a constitutional litigator myself. Oh, the naivete of youth!
Eventually, near the culmination of my internship, I was formally invited to the great man’s study to ask him a question.
Imagine, for a second. You are the J-2 of the Supreme Court of India, humouring a boy who looks like he hasn’t quite arrived at an age when he needs to start shaving regularly, when you’re asked why the Court never apologised for ADM Jabalpur1 - the decision so reviled that phrases like “black mark” and “darkest hour” of the Indian judiciary are used freely and with great abandon when discussing it.
The great man seemed startled. Noticing his reaction, I quickly moved on to talking about the 44th amendment to the Constitution, which had effectively overruled ADM, and sought his opinion as to whether anything in the case actually survived, but he seemed pensive, almost wrought. I was quickly ushered out of his study, and shortly thereafter, his life.
Time passed, and I resumed college, taking back nothing but memories of a few pleasant weeks spent at 6, Motilal Nehru Marg. This happened in 2016.
In mid-2017, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar passed a landmark decision recognising a fundamental right to privacy. The majority opinion, authored by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud (again, as he then was), joined by Chief Justice Khehar and Justices R.K. Agarwal and S. Abdul Nazeer, had a couple of short paragraphs recognising ADM Jabalpur as “seriously flawed” and overruling it.
Well played, sir. Well played.
Footnotes
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Additional District Magistrate, Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla - AIR 1976 SC 1207, was the case in which the Supreme Court of India held that all fundamental rights granted by the Constitution of India, including the right against unlawful detention by the State, stood suspended during state emergencies. Justice H.R. Khanna’s lone dissent in the matter led to his being superseded as the Chief Justice of the country and consequent resignation. ↩