CJI Surya Kant: Emphasizes Compassion in Judging, Algorithms for Scheduling

Home / Top Stories CJI Surya Kant On Compassion In Judging: ‘Let Algorithms Schedule Hearings But Let Compassion Govern Proceedings’ X CJI Surya Kant speaks on compassion in judging at the second Professor Dr. Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture Speaking at the 2nd Prof. (Dr.) N.R. Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture, CJI Surya Kant said compassionate judging required courts to look beyond legal abstractions and consider the human realities affected by judicial proceedings Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has stressed the need to place compassion at the centre of the justice system, saying that judicial decision-making must account not only for the legal issues before the court but also for the human realities surrounding them. Speaking at the second Professor Dr. Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture, the CJI recalled a thought he had shared at the lecture the previous year: “let algorithms schedule hearings but let compassion govern proceedings.” “I’m glad that the second half of that sentence has returned this year as the theme of an entire evening,” he said. Reflecting on the life and work of Professor Dr. Madhava Menon, the founder of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, CJI Surya Kant said compassion had been a consistent thread running through his work as a teacher, law reformer and institution builder. “When he came to write his own life, his autobiography, the founder of this country's first national law school chose to call it simply the story of a law teacher, ” the CJI said. “That choice tells us a great deal about the man. For the finest teachers are before anything else people who care,” he added. The CJI recalled Menon's work with legal clinics for the poor at Aligarh Muslim University and his association with Justice V R Krishna Iyer on the Expert Committee on Legal Aid in 1973. He noted that the committee's report was titled “Processual Justice to the People” and recalled Menon's role in building a new kind of law school in Bengaluru in 1986. “What he built there was not merely a curriculum but a community,” CJI Surya Kant said. He also referred to Menon's contribution to the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System, particularly his emphasis on recognising crime victims as persons entitled to be heard and compensated. “One conviction runs through the whole of his life, namely that the law is properly learned only in the company of the people it is meant to serve,” the CJI said. “Compassion for him was never an ornament added once the work was done. It was the thread that sewed all of it together,” he added. 'Courtroom sees the case, academia sees the pattern' CJI Surya Kant also highlighted the importance of academic research in understanding whether the justice system is actually delivering outcomes promised by judicial orders. “A single order may award compensation to one victim of crime. 10,000 such orders studied together reveal whether our promise to victims is actually being kept,” he said. “No single case is designed to show that larger picture. That's where scholarship becomes indispensable.” He said researchers could follow the lives of victims beyond the courtroom to examine whether compensation had actually been paid and whether victims and their families had received the support contemplated by law. “It is the scholar who follows the victim beyond the courtroom asking whether the compensation awarded is actually paid, whether a bereaved family receives the support it needs and whether victims are truly heard,” he said. The CJI emphasised the need for closer engagement between the judiciary and academia. “The courtroom sees the case while academia sees the pattern and justice if it is to be wise as well as correct must see both, ” he said. He also referred to the Supreme Court's recently commenced monthly lecture series aimed at bringing the Bench, Bar and academia together. CJI lays out five questions on compassionate judging Turning to the theme of the lecture, CJI Surya Kant identified