On November 8, On November 8, after penning more than 500 judgments, the 50th Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, demitted office. In his tenure he has given landmark judgements like Ayodhya land dispute, abrogation of Article 370, the decriminalisation of consensual gay sex and many more. With his judgements he left an imprint all his own on the annals of legal history.
On his last day, he said with a smile, “Last evening, when my registrar judicial asked me when should be the ceremonial, I was told 2 pm because we can wrap a lot of items. I thought to myself, will anybody be there in this court at 2 pm Friday afternoon,” he also said, “Or will I look at myself on the screen?”
Expressing his gratitude to the judiciary for shaping his argument skills & teaching him valuable courtroom techniques he said “We are here as pilgrims to work, and the work we do can make or break cases. There have been great judges who have adorned this court and passed on this baton.”
The legacy of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud goes beyond his judicial pronouncements and stands as a physical testimony: a reimagined ‘Lady Justice.’ Instead of the conventional blindfolded Goddess of Justice, the six-foot statue now displays a woman in a sari, holding a scale in one hand and a copy of the Constitution in the other, crowned, sans blindfold-a bold emblem of equality and authority.
Chandrachud’s term as Chief Justice, which started on November 9, 2022, was not short of landmark rulings and controversies. One such controversy was the renaming, by him, of the Supreme Court summer vacation as “partial court working days,” a criticized notion in light of the long break the officers enjoy. Son of his father Y.V. Chandrachud, who was also the Chief Justice from 1978-1985 and remains the longest to have held this office, they are the only father-son duo that reached the position.
D.Y. Chandrachud was educated at St. Stephen’s College and Harvard Law School, and his pronouncements show the juxtaposition of scholarship and deep jurisprudence. The most important decisions are exercises in expanding fundamental rights to include privacy and invalidating the electoral bond scheme. He was a member of the historical five-judge bench that supported passive euthanasia and helped bring the Ayodhya land dispute to rest with the 2019 Ram Janmabhoomi ruling, ending over a century of contention.
Chandrachud also significantly advocated for social justice by authoring rulings that decriminalized same-sex conduct, acknowledged the withdrawal in his ruling of living wills of dying patients, and endorsed privacy as a fundamental right. The bench has yet to uphold the validity of Article 370, which withdrew Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, in 2019. His comments on the Ayodhya issue just before his departure and his failure to legalize same-sex marriage drew quite a bit of media attention.
As a reformer, he pushed for the digitalization of court processes and embraced live streaming of court proceedings. Chandrachud’s work, from his utterances on bail to judicial transparency, stands him as a formidable will in transforming India’s legal landscape.
