It is undeniable that the Supreme Court’s role as the Constitution’s sheet anchor has been weakened in recent times. This dilution, at least partly, owes to the court’s inability to devote itself substantially to the determination of important public questions. As Nick Robinson’s studies have demonstrated, the number of cases decided by constitution benches — benches comprising five or more judges — has steadily declined right from the Supreme Court’s inception. Between 1950 and 1954, almost 15 per cent of the total cases decided by the Supreme Court were decisions of constitution benches. By the time the 1970s came around, this figure had dipped below one per cent. Between 2005 and 2009, benches comprising five judges or more decided only a worryingly paltry 0.12 per cent of the court’s total decisions. This has meant that in spite of the specific precepts of Article 145(3) of the Constitution — which mandates that a minimum of five judges sit for the purpose of deciding any case involving a substantial question of constitutional law — division benches of two judges have increasingly decided important disputes requiring a nuanced interpretation of the Constitution.
For example, in December 2013, it was a bench of two judges, in Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, which reversed the Delhi High Court’s momentous judgment declaring Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, insofar as it criminalised homosexuality, as unconstitutional. Similarly, when last year in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India the Supreme Court struck down the pernicious Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, in the process paving the way for a refined thinking on the right to free speech, it was once again a bench of two judges that rendered the verdict.
What we have, therefore, is a quite unusual scheme of constitutionalism where any given pair of two individuals is vested with the enormous power of ruling conclusively on significant matters of public importance. This phenomenon — still relatively recent — of rulings by two-judge benches in noteworthy cases has coincided with the court’s mounting docket. What’s clearly evident is that this manner of functioning is far from what the Constitution’s framers envisaged of the Supreme Court.
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