Judicial Education Is Not Bound By Syllabus, But By A Judge’s Understanding: Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra

Speaking at the inaugural session of the two-day West Zone Regional Conference on “Expanding Horizons of Judicial Education” in Gwalior, Justice Mishra emphasised the distinction between knowing the law and understanding how it must be applied to particular factual situations.

The conference was organised by the National Judicial Academy in collaboration with the High Court of Madhya Pradesh and the Madhya Pradesh State Judicial Academy. “Knowing is not understanding,” Justice Mishra said, explaining that while knowledge may remain abstract, understanding involves applying what is known to a particular situation.

He said the judicial process requires judges first to know the facts, understand the real problem, know the applicable law and then understand how that law needs to be applied to the specific facts before the court.

“The real horizon of judicial education is not the boundary of the syllabus; rather, it is the boundary of a judge's understanding, and the boundary must keep moving,” he said.

Justice Mishra said judging was not merely an exercise in knowing legal principles but also required understanding the law, its consequences, the institution within which it operates and, most importantly, the human beings who appear before the court.

He observed that even where two litigants are faced with the same set of facts, their individual needs may be different.

Need for continuous judicial learning

Justice Mishra stressed that judicial education must be a continuous process, with judges expanding their knowledge through every case and every argument presented before them.

He distinguished experience from learning, noting that judicial experience by itself does not necessarily amount to education. “Experience tells us what we have been. Education makes us ask whether what we have seen can teach us something about what we have not yet seen,” he said.

According to Justice Mishra, this distinction has become particularly significant because society continues to change while the law does not remain static.

He said contemporary litigation is increasingly shaped by technology, changing economic relationships, new forms of evidence, social transformation and complex institutional structures. “The courtroom of today is therefore not necessarily the courtroom in which many of us began our judicial journey,” he said.

Technology creating new legal challenges

Justice Mishra highlighted the challenges posed by emerging technologies, particularly in relation to evidence.

He referred to platforms such as YouTube and the emergence of deepfakes, observing that technological developments can make it increasingly difficult to determine what is real and what is not. “The evidence is unreal. The people who create those evidence are unreal. And at times the litigious and the litigant both are unreal in court,” he said.

He said such developments require judges to expand their understanding so that they can deal with complex factual situations and determine how existing legal principles should be applied.

Justice Mishra said the judiciary cannot simply rely on existing precedents to resolve every emerging dispute because new factual situations may not always have a direct precedent.

Interpreting existing laws in new situations

Justice Mishra said judges must continue to innovate in interpreting laws that may have existed for several decades when those laws are required to address new situations arising from technology and changing social behaviour.

He noted that the same law may have to be applied to a different factual situation and therefore require a different interpretation within the existing legal framework. “Like we always say that the wrongdoers, like criminals and wrongdoers, they are becoming more intelligent, so judges also have to expand their horizon to be more adept to the new complex fact situation,” he said.

He stressed that this did not mean abandoning established legal principles, but developing the ability to apply them to increasingly complex circumstances.

Judiciary must rise to new challenges

Justice Mishra said the expansion of judicial horizons was necessary to ensure that courts remain capable of responding to emerging challenges. He expressed confidence in the judiciary’s ability to respond to new legal and societal problems. “Judiciary has never failed in this country, and judiciary will never fail in this country,” he said.

Justice Mishra said the judiciary would continue to “rise to the occasion” whenever new challenges emerged and find solutions that would enable the country’s democratic institutions to withstand changing circumstances. He concluded by emphasising the role of judicial education in preparing judges to understand emerging problems, adapt their approach and apply existing law to new and complex situations.