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Justice Chandrachud also focused on another key issue – the complicated language used in laws and court judgments. He said laws should be written in a simple and clear way so that ordinary citizens can understand them.
Former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, has made a strong appeal for major judicial reforms in the country. Speaking at the News18 Rising Bharat Summit in a conversation with Zakka Jacob and Ananya Bhatnagar, he focused on the need to improve how judges are selected, simplify the language of laws, and improve how the common people experience the justice system.
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DY Chandrachud emphasised that changes in the judicial system should start at the district level. He explained how ordinary citizens mainly interact with the legal system through district courts, not the higher courts.
“Judicial reforms have to begin at the very base of the pyramid, mainly the district judiciary, because that’s where common people come into contact with the judicial system,” said Chandrachud.
He gave the example of young couples dealing with matrimonial disputes. These cases usually go to family courts, not high courts or the Supreme Court.
“A young couple which has a matrimonial dispute, where do they go to? They don’t go to the high court or the Supreme Court. As a matter first instance, they go to family court,” he explained.
But family courts are overburdened due to a wrong approach to resolving such sensitive matters.
“Now, you see that in the family courts, there is a huge backlog of cases. For the reason that we have used the adversarial system for resolving family disputes, which is so completely incorrect, family disputes have to be resolved by applying non-adversarial systems because you have a child. There are issues of child custody and child welfare, so we have to adopt a more non-adversarial system at the level of district judiciary,” Chandrachud added.
There is a growing demand for a better and more transparent process of appointing judges in India. Currently, district-level judges are appointed by state governments through competitive exams, while high court and Supreme Court judges are appointed through the collegium system.
Chandrachud suggested it is time to discuss a new idea for a nationwide judicial exam to select judges for district-level courts.
“Recruitment to the Indian district judiciary takes place in the states. It’s never at the national level. I’m a proponent of at least be some national deliberation taking place on should we have an All India Judicial Service in India,” he said.
He clarified that such a system should be considered only for district judges, not for higher judiciary.
Chandrachud also shared how the All India Judicial Service could work in practice:
“We can at least have a national level examination and then allow for recruitment by the states on the basis of the merit list in the national examination, apply the reservation in relation to each state, whether for the STs, the SCs, or OBCs as the case may be,” he explained.
Justice Chandrachud also focused on another key issue – the complicated language used in laws and court judgments. He said laws should be written in a simple and clear way so that ordinary citizens can understand them.
“Laws and verdicts are meant for the people and therefore they should be written in a way that people may understand them,” he said.
He acknowledged that some steps have been taken already, like:
- Publishing simplified versions of judgments in journals.
- Holding court proceedings in regional languages.
- Live-streaming of court proceedings.
But much more needs to be done.
Chandrachud pointed out that many laws use Latin terms and legal language that are confusing for ordinary people.
“There is a disconnect between the spoken version of our regional languages and the official version of our regional languages. For instance, my mother tongue is Marathi and I’m very fluent in Hindi and I know several other Indian languages. Now, spoken Marathi or spoken Hindi is very different from official Marathi or official Hindi. Now, how does a citizen understand official Marathi or official Hindi? Or for that matter official Tamil or Bangla? So we have to bridge this gap between the way laws are drafted in the official language and the laws as they should be understood in the language which citizens speak,” he said.
He admitted that writing in simple language is not easy, but it is necessary.
“It’s extremely difficult to be simple, but it’s very easy to be complex,” Chandrachud summed up.
