Judges learn about upcoming cases on social media before they do from their files: Justice DY Chandrachud

Written by Neena Nagare

Justice DY Chandrachud while speaking at the London School of Economics (LSE) on the topic, ‘Experiences with Adjudication: Reconciling Rights, Identities & Prejudices’ stated that social media has highly impacted even judges and judiciary to a great extent in recent times.

He emphasized that before judges open a case’s file, social media updates them more about what is coming before them. However he did perpetuate that proper care must be taken while regulating social media as it represents freedom of speech and expression.

Relevantly, he continued that as judges decide a case based on the facts, evidence and arguments, especially in political and social topics it is rather important for judges to have understanding of the people’s opinions.

“Speaking for myself as a judge, there is a distinction between facts and opinions if facts as they are depicted in the media are important, are valuable aids and tools for judges to understand social reality because judges very often by the nature of their profession must be very insularized, isolated.”

He opined that with judicial training, judges can be able to distinguish the case’s facts with the hundreds of vocal opinions they come across everyday.

“The key challenge is how do you dissociate what you hear, and how do you balance that with your duty to decide only on the basis of the record before you. I think that’s a matter of judicial training,” he said.

Also while responding to a question concerning inclusion and diversity in the Indian Judiciary, he responded,

“How do we ensure that first and foremost, we have more women entering legal education, second once they do, how do we ensure that the structure of the legal profession changes?” 

He emphasized “The idea is not just to appoint people from diverse backgrounds merely to promote a representation of different groups, but there is some intrinsic importance in terms of diversity of the views which people from diverse backgrounds bring to the table,”

The event was a joint successful accomplishment between the LSE, and the National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU), UK