[Reader-list] [Commons-Law] A Supreme Court Judge on caste in judiciary

[Rohit De]

Thanks Anuj for starting off this much needed discussion. There is a need to 
interrogate the notion of"pure merit" that seems to exist in public 
discourse. Interestingly Justice Pandian also points out the lack of women 
judges. There are none of the present Supreme Court. While he doesn't look 
at religious minorites, the presence of Muslim judges is also negligible, so 
its not surprising that we have decisons like Aruna Roy and the Aligarh 
Muslim University.

This is interesting because the figures for the subordinate judiciary seem 
to be a little more equitable. I found some figures in the Sachar Committee 
report (p.173)  which state that Muslim representation in the judiciary is 
7.8%, OBC's constitute about 23% and SC/ST's about 20%. The Hindu General 
(their terms) is over represented in the judiciary with almost twice their 
share in the population and constitutes almost half of all those in the 
judiciary. Don't subordinate judiciaries implement reservations for women as 
well? So obviously there is no necessary contradiction between being a judge 
and affirmative action of some kind.

It would be useful if someone had access to figures which could indicate how 
many judges are drawn from the bar and how many are drawn from the 
subordinate judiciary, and which ones make it to the Supreme Court. It would 
also be instructive to look what the background of lawyer turned judges are.

Looking forward to responses.
Cheers

Rohit



>From: "Anuj Bhuwania" <anujbhuwania at gmail.com>
>To: reader-list at sarai.net, commonslaw <commons-law at sarai.net>
>Subject: Re: [Commons-Law] A Supreme Court Judge on caste in judiciary
>Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:34:59 +0530
>
>Sorry, the earlier link I had sent did not work. Its now available at:
>http://www.altlawforum.org/Resources/judicial_nineties/pandian.rtf
>
>Anuj
>
>On 4/25/07, Anuj Bhuwania <anujbhuwania at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > In the context of the breathtaking arrogance displayed by Justice
> > Arijit Passayat of the Supreme Court in refusing to reconsider its
> > erroneous order injuncting reservation for OBCs in Central educational
> > institutions, and the rather different response from Chief Justice
> > Balakrishnan yesterday, I think its high time we started discussing
> > the caste character of the higher judiciary itself. Of course, broader
> > social representation  is not necessarily a pancea for the "judicial
> > emergency" that increasingly seems to prevail in India.
> >
> > To initiate a  discussion on this issue, I am giving a link below to an
> > extract from an astonishing SC judgment, in the SCAORA case, the
> > famous case where the SC gave itself the power to appoint judges of
> > the higher judiciary in India.  The extract is  a separate concurring
> > judgment filed by Justice Ratnavel Pandian. Pandian cited data
> > regarding SC/ST and OBC judges in the High Courts and the Supreme
> > Court, and reproduced them in his judgement to make his point.  (By
> > the way, J. Pandian is the same judge who gave the majority opinion
> > upholding the constitutionality of TADA) . Apart from this, I am not
> > aware
> > of any recent data and this too is dated 1993, compiling the caste
> > make-up of the higher judiciary in India.
> >
> > http://www.altlawforum.org/Resources/judicial_nineties/Pandian
> >
> > Anuj
> >
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