Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta.

New Delhi: Senior lawyer and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has said in his forthcoming book that the extraordinary court reverence shown to judges by lawyers across the world has imbued some judges with a false sense of divinity, turning some into ‘My Lords’ goons – an attitude that avoids contempt but can still create sensitive irritants on the bench.To illustrate his theme of “goons on the bench”, Mehta has compiled incidents from foreign courts that can hold a mirror to the Indian judiciary. In ‘The Bench, the Bar and the Bizarre’ he writes, “Judicial bullying takes many forms. Some judges constantly interrupt counsel, while others firmly cross the line of insult.”

Public expects highest standards from judges: SG

He says that although the judicial system is primarily for litigants, they cannot seek protection of their constitutional and statutory rights but can plead through their counsel with “His Excellency’s permission”. “Even a patent legal absurdity coming from the bench is met (by the lawyers) first with ‘We bow before your Lordships’ before the lawyer dares to ‘take the liberty’ of presenting an ‘alternative proposal for His Lordship’s gracious consideration’,” he says.Satirical in tone, this book is arguably a bold take, that too by a serving law officer, on the widely shared lament in the Bar that condescending judges on the bench are weaponising their elevated position and power asymmetry. Mehta, whose nearly eight-year tenure as SG – starting in 2018 – is the second longest after the famous CK Daftari’s 13-year tenure as the first SG, says the judiciary is the most respected branch of the state.He says, “That respect can be achieved through the blunt instrument of contempt powers, or it can be sustained by building genuine trust of stakeholders, arising from fairness, neutrality and civility in the treatment of litigants and lawyers.”He also says that judges in various countries have always expressed resentment over any external monitoring of their work or mechanism to hear complaints against them and see it as an “intrusion into the independence of the judiciary”.TOI has an exclusive copy of the book which has traveled across jurisdictions across the world and carefully selected several interesting and incisive examples from court dramas.Mehta also acknowledges the problems of judges. “In almost all jurisdictions, courtrooms are crowded and crowded places that provide nothing but a pleasant working environment. Judges work under pressure of cases with minimal infrastructure and scarce institutional support. Their resources are often completely disproportionate to the volume and complexity of the cases they are expected to decide,” he says.Remuneration of judges, especially at the trial level, is modest and often fails to keep pace with inflation. Mehta writes, “Added to this are the daily provocations of unreasonable litigants and irritable lawyers, which can test even the most disciplined judicial temperament.”But showing sympathy, Mehta says the difficulties being faced cannot be an excuse for judges to be rude in the courtroom. He says that judges are made by this system, its pressures, flaws and provocations.Mehta says the public expects the highest standards of conduct from judges, as they can vote out an arrogant or wrong politician, but not an arrogant or wrong judge. On the lines of Arun Jaitley’s favorite trope of unjustly arrogant judges being “tyrants of the unelected”, Mehta writes, “He is neither directly accountable nor answerable to the people. Any deviation from ideal judicial restraint risks eroding the trust that sustains the institution of the judiciary.“Referring to the huge power imbalance inside the courtroom, the SG says, “When a judge becomes arrogant, abusive, obstructive or intolerant during arguments, it is not a competition between equals. The lawyer has few options and is obnoxious. To react in turn is to jeopardize his client’s interests and his own professional existence… It is usually left to a brave litigant, rather than the lawyer, to draw the attention of a higher body to such judicial behaviour.“