“A Judge Must Be Impartial But Never Indifferent”: Justice Vikram Nath

Justice Nath said compassionate adjudication did not mean favouring a party, showing leniency or allowing emotion to override evidence and law. Instead, it required judges to understand the human circumstances in which a legal controversy arose.

“Compassion in adjudication means understanding before judging. The discipline of seeing the human circumstances in which a legal controversy arose,” Justice Nath said.

He drew a distinction between impartiality and indifference, stressing that judges must remain sensitive to the consequences of their decisions while continuing to apply the law.

“Impartiality and indifference are not the same thing. The blindfold on Lady Justice does not mean she cannot see. It means she does not look at who stands before her before deciding what is right. She still weighs and weighs with care. A judge must be impartial but never indifferent,” he said.

Justice Nath said courts routinely translate human experiences into legal categories, but warned against allowing those categories to obscure the individual behind the case. “The first duty of compassionate judging is never to let legal abstraction erase human reality,” he said.

He illustrated this by referring to two undertrial prisoners who were granted bail on identical conditions, but where only one was able to secure release because the other could not furnish the required conditions.

“On paper, the law treated them equally. In life, it did not,” Justice Nath said.

He said this gap between formal equality and equality as experienced in real life was an area to which constitutional courts must remain attentive.

Justice Nath also highlighted the importance of time in the administration of justice, observing that the passage of time has very different consequences for litigants than it does for courts.

“Three months is an adjournment in a cause list. For an under trial, it is three months of liberty. For a child awaiting custody, it is a part of childhood. For a terminally ill litigant, it may be time that cannot be returned,” he said.

The Supreme Court judge also emphasised the role of lawyers in ensuring that justice remains humane. He said lawyers were often the first human face of the justice system encountered by a litigant.

“Advocacy is not merely the skill of speaking. It is the responsibility of representation,” Justice Nath said.

Referring to Mahatma Gandhi's experience as a lawyer, he said lawyers should not automatically treat every disagreement as a dispute requiring litigation.

“If she is concerned with justice, the first question changes from can I file a case to what does this person actually need? Sometimes the answer is litigation, sometimes mediation and sometimes simple advice,” he said.

Justice Nath also underlined the importance of legal aid, saying that even a matter that may appear insignificant to an institution could have life-changing consequences for the person represented.

“There is no such thing as a small legal aid brief,” he said.

“For a person of means, choosing a lawyer is a professional decision. For a poor person, a competent legal aid or lawyer must decide whether a constitutional right exists in reality at all,” Justice Nath added.

On legal education, Justice Nath recalled Professor Menon's contribution to the five-year integrated law programme and clinical legal education. “Legal education is not peripheral to justice delivery. It is the first institution of justice delivery,” he said.

Justice Nath said legal education must expose students to the realities of clients and the justice system rather than confining them to abstract legal problems. “Professor Menon's answer was to take the student out of the abstraction and let the student meet the person,” he said.

The judge also addressed the increasing use of technology and artificial intelligence in the legal system, while cautioning that technological efficiency could not substitute human judgment. “Technology can assist human judgment but cannot replace fairness, empathy, and conscience,” Justice Nath said.

Addressing law students, he observed that artificial intelligence would increasingly be capable of searching thousands of judgments, drafting, comparing, translating and summarising legal material.

He therefore urged students to cultivate qualities that technology could not replicate. “Do not try to beat a machine at remembering more. Become better than a machine at understanding what matters,” Justice Nath said.

Towards the conclusion of his lecture, Justice Nath described Professor Menon's legacy through four responsibilities: judges should not allow impartiality to become indifference; lawyers should not allow advocacy to become mere victory; teachers should not allow legal education to become mere information; and students should not allow ambition to become the measure of their professional lives.

“Compassion belongs not at the margins of law but within the discipline of law,” Justice Nath reiterated.

“Not as a sentiment, not as an indulgence, not as a substitute for principle, but as the human intelligence with which principle is understood and applied," he said.

Justice Nath concluded by saying that Professor Menon's greater legacy was the question he left for every generation: “What are you doing with law to increase justice?”