Class 8 Social Science Chapter 11: The Role of the Judiciary

Start with a complaint, not a court

Think of a time somebody treated you unfairly. You probably wanted one of three things: for the person to be punished, for them to apologise, or for the loss to be made good somehow. The person you blamed probably wanted something too, and it was almost certainly the chance to explain. Hold on to all four of those wants. Everything in this chapter is built out of them.

What a law is

A law is a general rule, made by the government, that applies to everybody and carries a consequence if it is broken. The consequence may be as small as a fine. Governments are also given the power to enforce their laws, with force where that is needed. So a law is a rule plus the machinery to make it stick.

What justice is

Justice is harder to pin down, because it is not a rule but a standard. The Preamble to our Constitution promises every citizen social, economic and political justice, which is a wide promise: not just a fair vote, but a fair share and fair treatment. A society that has justice is one where people can live as equals, with dignity, and in peace with one another.

The gap

Here is the thing a civics chapter has to say plainly: a rule can be perfectly legal and still be unjust. The government makes laws in order to deliver justice, which is why the two are usually spoken of together. But the law is the instrument and justice is the standard, and an instrument can be built wrong.

A law that sorted people by colour

In parts of the United States, a set of laws known as the Jim Crow laws kept African Americans and other people of colour away from facilities set aside for white people. Drinking fountains, swimming pools, even restaurants were covered. None of this was illegal. It was the law, and it was enforced as the law. It was officially repealed only in the 1960s.

A law that sorted people by race

South Africa went further. During the apartheid era, in the middle and later twentieth century, the law itself divided people by race, and people classified as coloured faced severe restrictions under a whole range of statutes. Those restrictions kept citizens from using public facilities and from living with dignity. The laws concerned were repealed in 1991.

What the two examples share

In both cases the officials enforcing the rules were not breaking any law. The injustice sat inside the statute, which is why neither situation could be fixed by punishing an official. The only repair was to change the law, and in both countries that is eventually what happened. That sequence, unjust law to repealed law, is the clearest evidence that justice is the measure and not the measured.

Back to your own complaint

Now return to the unfairness you thought of at the start. You wanted punishment, or an apology, or compensation. The person accused wanted a hearing. Those pull in different directions, and the difference between them is the difference between the two aspects of justice that the rest of this topic is about.

Substantive justice

Substantive justice is about the result. It asks a single question of any decision: is this outcome actually fair, just and reasonable? Not whether the right forms were filled in, and not whether everybody was polite about it. Whether the answer, in the end, was the right one.

Procedural justice

Procedural justice is about the road to the result. It asks whether every person involved was given a full chance to be heard before the decision was taken. A hearing is not a courtesy that can be dropped when everyone is sure of the answer. It is half of what justice means.

The presumption that protects everybody

Procedural justice carries one rule that does a lot of work on its own: every person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Notice who that protects. It protects the person who is in fact innocent and cannot yet prove it, which, before a hearing, is indistinguishable from the person who is guilty. That is exactly why the presumption has to come first.

Why one aspect is not enough

A fair-looking outcome reached without hearing one side is not justice, because nobody can know it was the right outcome. A long and careful hearing that ends in an unreasonable decision is not justice either. Both aspects have to hold, and a court that fails at either has failed.

Three ways a quarrel can end

Societies are full of interactions, personal and professional, so disagreements come from every direction. Many are settled by the parties simply talking: that is dialogue. Some are settled with help from a neutral person: that is mediation. Some are settled by a court deciding: that is adjudication. The court is one route out of a dispute, not the only one, and the last topic of this chapter comes back to the others.

What the judiciary is for

The judiciary is the institution that decides disputes fairly, according to the law, so that people are treated justly. It is one of government's three pillars, and it has a second job besides deciding quarrels. It checks that the laws the legislature passes stay inside the frame the Constitution sets, and that the executive does not step outside the role the Constitution gives it.

Why it has to be independent

Those two jobs explain why the judiciary is kept independent of the legislature and the executive. A court that could be instructed by the government would be useless for the very task of judging the government's own laws and actions. Independence is not a privilege the judges enjoy; it is a condition of the work being worth anything at all.

Scenario:

Picture a public park in a town where the law says one drinking fountain is for some people and a second fountain, further away, is for everybody else. A police officer stands nearby to enforce it. A child walks up to the nearer fountain and is sent to the far one. Nothing illegal has happened. The officer is applying the law as written, and a court asked to rule on it would find the officer acted lawfully. The child has still been treated as less than equal, in public, by an arrangement the state built and the state polices.

Analysis:

This is why justice is treated as a standard above the law rather than a summary of it. Both historical examples in this topic worked exactly like the scene above: lawful, enforced, and wrong, until the law was changed.

Activity:

Rewrite the park's rule so that it passes the test of justice, in one sentence.

Title:

Sort the complaint

Safety:

No safety concerns; this is a paper exercise.

What You Notice:

The slips that belong in both boxes are the interesting ones. They show that substantive and procedural justice usually fail together, which is why courts are asked to look at each.

The motto of the Supreme Court of India, in Sanskrit, says that where there is dharma there is victory.

The Jim Crow laws covered ordinary things such as drinking fountains, swimming pools and restaurants.

Procedural justice is why a court will hear a person everybody already believes to be guilty.

The two aspects of justice — THE ANSWER, AND THE ASKING — Substantive justice judges the answer a court arrives at; procedural justice judges whether everybody was asked before it did.

Law against justice — THE RULER IS NOT THE LENGTH — A law is the instrument and justice is the standard, so measuring one by the other only works in one direction.

One court, five doors

The Supreme Court is usually described as the court at the top, which makes it sound like the last step of a climb. That picture is wrong in an interesting way. There are five distinct ways a matter can reach it, and only one of them involves climbing. Learning the five doors is more useful than learning the hierarchy.

The court itself

In India the Supreme Court stands highest among all the courts of law. It came into existence on the day the Constitution came into effect, 26 January 1950. Article 124 provides for its establishment, and it sits in New Delhi. Where the Constitution itself is in doubt, this is the court whose reading settles the matter.

Who sits on it

The court is headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who is designated Chief Justice of India. Its present strength is thirty-three judges besides the Chief Justice. Every one of them is appointed by the President of India, under Article 124.

Three routes to that bench

A judge of the Supreme Court must be a citizen of India, and must also satisfy one of three further conditions. Five years as a judge of a High Court, or of more than one. Ten years as an advocate of a High Court, or of more than one. Or being, in the President's opinion, a distinguished jurist. The third route is worth noticing: it lets somebody who has never held judicial office be appointed. A Supreme Court judge retires at sixty-five.

Door one: a writ petition

Suppose a Fundamental Right of yours has been violated. You do not have to begin at the bottom of the ladder and work up. Article 32 gives a citizen the right to take a writ petition straight to the Supreme Court where the issue has consequences for the whole country. The same power exists in a High Court under Article 226, where the violation is within that state's territorial limits. Writ jurisdiction belongs to the constitutional courts for one purpose: enforcing the rights guaranteed by Part III, which include equality, liberty, the right to life, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The door widened: public interest litigation

A writ petition works only if the person whose right is violated can file one. Prisoners cannot. So the Supreme Court made an innovation: public interest litigation, filed under Article 32 or Article 226, lets a matter of public concern be brought by somebody other than the person affected. Its purpose was to give the right to life under Article 21 real content.

How the first one started

A lawyer, Mrs Kapila Hingorani, read in a newspaper that prisoners in Bihar awaiting trial had already been held longer than the sentence they would have received had they been convicted. None of them was her client. She filed a writ petition for their release. The Supreme Court ordered it at once, and issued guidelines that led to the release of almost forty thousand under-trial prisoners across India.

Two more that changed the law

In M.C. Mehta against the Union of India, environmental matters came before the court, including work on cleaning the Ganga and on protecting the Taj Mahal. In Vishaka and others against the State of Rajasthan, the court in 1997 set out guidelines on sexual harassment in the workplace. Parliament later enacted a statute on the subject in 2013. Notice the direction of travel there: a court's guidelines became a law.

Door two: cases that start here

Some disputes cannot be heard anywhere else at all. Article 131 gives the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction over three of them. The Centre against a State. The Centre and a State together against another State. And a dispute between States, such as a quarrel over river water. No district court or High Court can touch them.

Door three: appeals

This is the climbing door. An appeal may be brought here from a final order of a High Court. One condition applies: the High Court itself must certify the case, saying that it turns on reading the Constitution, or on a substantial question of law. It also hears High Court judgments in criminal cases involving a death sentence, or where the judgment is certified fit for appeal. Appeals from specialised tribunals, such as the National Green Tribunal and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, come here too.

Door four: a question, not a dispute

Under Article 143 the President may ask the Supreme Court for its opinion on a legal or factual question that matters publicly, and the court may give one. Such a reference must be heard by a Constitution Bench of at least five judges. Nothing is being decided between two parties here; a question is being answered.

Door five: the court's own choice

Article 136 gives the Supreme Court a discretionary power to grant special leave to appeal from any judgment, decree or order of any court or tribunal in India. It is used where a question of law of wide public importance arises, or where substantive justice between the parties requires it. This door differs from the appeal door in who opens it: there the High Court certifies, here the Supreme Court itself decides to look.

What its decisions are worth

Under Article 141 the law declared by the Supreme Court binds every court in the territory of India. That is what makes a single case matter beyond its own parties. Article 142 lets the court pass any order necessary for doing complete justice, and Article 144 requires all civil and judicial authorities to act in aid of the Supreme Court.

Why the five doors are the real lesson

Put the doors side by side and a pattern appears. One is for a citizen whose right is broken. One is for governments quarrelling with each other. One is for a litigant who has already lost below. One is for the President's questions. And one the court keeps for itself. A court reachable only by appeal would be a court for people who could afford to start at the bottom. The spread of doors is what makes it a court for everybody.

Scenario:

A lawyer reads a short item in a morning paper. Prisoners in Bihar are being held while awaiting trial. Several have already spent longer inside than the maximum sentence their alleged offence would have carried, had they been convicted. None of them has written to her. None of them is her client. She has no fee and no instructions. What she does have is Article 32, which lets a citizen go straight to the Supreme Court when a Fundamental Right is at stake, and Article 21, which protects the right to life.

Analysis:

The point of PIL is the gap it closes. A person held in jail without trial is the least able of all citizens to file a petition, and before PIL that meant the right went unenforced. Letting somebody else bring the case is what turned Article 21 from a promise into a remedy.

Activity:

Write the two-sentence newspaper item that could have started this case.

Title:

Route the case

Safety:

No safety concerns; this is a card exercise.

What You Notice:

Most disagreements will be between appellate and special leave. The difference is whether the High Court certified the case or the Supreme Court itself chose to take it up.

The Supreme Court's motto, in Sanskrit, says that where there is dharma there is victory.

Since 2024 a large Virtual Justice Clock stands at the Supreme Court's own main entrance gates.

A distinguished jurist may be appointed to the bench without ever having been a judge.

The five jurisdictions — WOASS: WRIT, ORIGINAL, APPEAL, ADVICE, SPECIAL — Writ for a citizen's right, original for governments, appeal for a litigant who lost below, advice for the President, special leave for the court's own choosing.

Appeal against special leave — WHO OPENS THE DOOR — In an appeal the High Court certifies the case; under Article 136 the Supreme Court itself decides to take it up.

Counting courts, and getting it wrong

Article 214 says each State shall have a High Court of its own. India has twenty-eight States. So how many High Courts are there? Twenty-five. The article is satisfied without one court per State, because sometimes two or more States, or Union Territories, come under one High Court between them. Several High Courts also sit in more than one city, through benches. The arithmetic will not work unless you read sharing into it.

What a High Court is

Within a State, the High Court stands highest. A Chief Justice heads it, along with other judges, and how many varies from one State to another. That variation is sensible: a larger State generates more cases.

Who appoints them, and after how long

A High Court judge is appointed by the President of India, after consulting three people: the Chief Justice of India, the State's Governor, and that court's own Chief Justice. Notice how many people are consulted. The qualifications sit in Article 217. A candidate must be an Indian citizen, and must either have held judicial office in India, or have spent ten years as an advocate of a High Court, or of more than one. A High Court judge retires at sixty-two, three years earlier than a Supreme Court judge.

The first job: writs

A High Court exercises writ jurisdiction under Article 226. This is the same remedy as Article 32 in the Supreme Court, but the ground is different. A High Court's writ power covers the violation of Fundamental Rights within the territorial limits of its own State. So a citizen has two doors, and which one to use depends on how far the problem reaches.

The second job: appeals

A High Court hears appeals against decisions of the subordinate courts below it, in civil and in criminal matters, and against the decisions of certain tribunals. This is the ordinary route upwards for somebody who has lost a case in a district court.

The third job: keeping others in bounds

Superintendence belongs to every High Court under Article 227, and it covers all the courts and tribunals inside that territory. The purpose is narrow and worth stating exactly: it is used to ensure that those courts and tribunals act within the limits of their own authority and jurisdiction. The chapter adds that the power is to be exercised sparingly. It is not a standing invitation to rehear cases.

Why that power is protected

The writ power and the supervisory power of the High Courts have been declared to belong to what is called the basic structure. That is a strong statement. It means these powers are not ordinary features that could be adjusted away.

Below the High Courts

Each State runs a system of subordinate courts. The Constitution regulates their organisation in Articles 233 to 237, and those provisions also work to keep the subordinate judiciary independent. District Judges are appointed by the Governor of the State in consultation with the High Court.

Why the lowest courts matter most

It is tempting to rank courts by importance and put these at the bottom. The chapter argues the opposite. The subordinate judiciary is a very important segment of the system, because this is where the judiciary comes into close contact with ordinary people. Most citizens who ever see a court see this one.

What sits in that layer

The layer takes in District Courts and Sessions Courts, Revenue Courts, Courts of Small Causes, and others besides. Each High Court is also charged with maintaining the standing and the good name of the subordinate judiciary in its State, which makes the relationship protective as well as supervisory.

A different kind of body

Then there are tribunals. A tribunal is a body, or a committee, set up to settle disputes of one particular kind. Tribunals are set up under particular statutes, and they are quasi-judicial: they decide, but they are not courts in the ordinary sense, and each handles one category of matter.

The tribunals, and their subjects

Consumer fora decide consumer disputes. The Central Administrative Tribunal decides service matters of government employees. The National Green Tribunal decides environmental issues. The National Company Law Tribunal decides corporate civil and commercial disputes, including insolvency and bankruptcy. The Armed Forces Tribunal decides matters relating to the armed forces. The Appellate Tribunal for Electricity decides electricity disputes.

A family, and an empty plot

A family agreed to buy a flat and paid an advance of almost sixty-five lakh rupees. The builder planned to begin construction in 2011. Four years later nothing had been built where the flat was to stand, which broke the agreement. The family complained to the National Consumer Commission. After hearing both sides, it ordered the builder to return the money with interest, and to pay the cost of the case.

Why the route matters more than the result

That order could in principle have come from an ordinary civil court. What the tribunal adds is specialisation. A body that hears nothing but consumer disputes knows the pattern of this quarrel already, which is the whole argument for taking the subject out of a general list. Appeals from some tribunals, such as the National Green Tribunal, go on to the Supreme Court, so specialisation does not mean isolation.

The shape of the whole system

Put the layers together. The Indian judicial system is unified: a single hierarchy. The Supreme Court sits at the apex, the High Courts at State level, and the subordinate courts in the districts. Tribunals are attached to the side, for particular subjects. Unified matters. It means a right declared at the top reaches the bottom, which a collection of separate systems could not promise.

Scenario:

A family agrees to buy a flat in a complex a builder plans to start in 2011, and pays an advance of nearly sixty-five lakh rupees. They visit the site every few months. Four years later the plot where their flat was to stand is still empty. The agreement with the builder has plainly been broken. The family does not go to the District Court. The National Consumer Commission hears both sides. It then orders the builder to return the money with interest and to meet the cost of the case as well.

Analysis:

The reason this case belongs in a chapter on the judiciary is the route, not the result. A specialised body with one subject can hear a dispute faster than a general court with every subject, which is the whole argument for tribunals.

Activity:

List three other tribunals from this topic and the dispute each one decides.

Title:

Find the court nearest you

Safety:

Do this from published information or with a teacher's help; do not visit a court building unaccompanied.

What You Notice:

The last step is where the surprise usually is. Several High Courts sit in more than one city, which is how a court for a large State stays reachable.

Several High Courts sit in more than one city, through benches, so a single court can serve a very large State.

The writ and supervisory powers of the High Courts have been declared part of the Constitution's basic structure.

A consumer commission can order a builder to pay the cost of the case as well as the money back.

A High Court's three powers — WRITS, APPEALS, EYES — Writs under Article 226, appeals from the courts below, and an eye on every court and tribunal in the territory under Article 227.

Two retirement ages — HIGHER COURT, HIGHER AGE — A High Court judge retires at sixty-two and a Supreme Court judge at sixty-five.

A question about power, not formality

Four routes out of a dispute are set out in this topic, and they are easy to confuse because they all sound like gentler versions of a trial. They are not variants of one thing. What separates them is a single question: who ends up holding the power to decide? Keep asking that question and the four stay distinct.

Why the alternatives exist at all

The judicial system handles an enormous number of cases. Courts themselves therefore encourage litigants to settle disputes by other means, which both relieves the load and gets people an answer sooner. The routes have a collective name, alternate modes of dispute resolution, and they include arbitration, mediation or conciliation, negotiation and the Lok Adalat.

Arbitration: a private decider

In arbitration the parties agree to refer their dispute to an independent adjudicator, or to a panel of them, called an arbitrator. An arbitrator may be a retired judge, or a practising lawyer, or somebody expert in whatever the quarrel is about. That last option matters: a dispute about a leaning wall can go to somebody who understands walls.

What an arbitrator must do, and what the decision is worth

An arbitrator is not free to decide as they please. The basic requirements include acting fairly and impartially, and allowing each party to put forward its own case. Notice that this is procedural justice from the first topic, appearing outside a court. The decision of the arbitrator or the panel is final, it binds both parties in law, and a court can enforce it. The statute behind it here is the Arbitration and Conciliation Act of 1996.

Mediation: nobody outside the dispute decides

Mediation is the most common of these routes. A neutral person is appointed as mediator, and that mediator assists the parties towards a settlement they make themselves. The crucial limit is what the mediator cannot do. A mediator has no power to make a decision, and none to impose a view on the parties. Behind it here stands an Act of 2023.

The difference, in one line

Both an arbitrator and a mediator are neutral outsiders brought in to end a quarrel without a trial. An arbitrator decides and the parties are bound. A mediator decides nothing and the parties decide. Confusing the two is the commonest error in this part of the chapter.

Lok Adalats: the people's courts

A Lok Adalat is a forum where disputes and cases can be settled amicably. It can resolve disputes already pending in the courts, and in some cases the parties may approach a Lok Adalat even before going to court. That second point surprises people, because the name sounds like something that happens after a case has begun.

Where a Lok Adalat gets its authority

Lok Adalats are rooted in the principle of access to justice, and they have recognition in law from the Legal Services Authorities Act of 1987. They function as people's courts. The aim is to reduce the judicial backlog, while settling matters amicably and sparing the parties the rigours of a formal hearing.

Gram Nyayalayas: the court comes to you

The statute behind the Gram Nyayalayas is an Act of 2008 bearing their name. Their purpose is to decentralise the judicial system and ease the load on the regular courts. They sit as village-level courts that travel. They follow a simplified procedure, without technicalities, which is what makes a village sitting practical at all.

Why mobility is the interesting part

Every other body in this chapter waits for people to come to it. A mobile court reverses that. For somebody in a village a long way from a district headquarters, the distance to a courthouse can be the whole obstacle, and no amount of simplified procedure would fix it.

Three criminal laws, replaced

The chapter also records a large change in the law itself. The Indian Penal Code of 1860 has been replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita of 2023. The Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973 gave way in 2023 to the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita of 2023. The evidence statute of 1872 yielded to the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam of 2023.

What those three were meant to do

The stated aims are faster justice, the admission of digital evidence, and stronger safeguards for victims, and the intention behind all three is a system that is modern, transparent and effective. Look at the dates being replaced: 1860, 1872, 1973. Two of the three codes were older than the Constitution itself.

Digital technology, and who it is for

Digital technology came into the courts for two reasons: to make the system easier to reach, and more transparent. One use is that litigants can check the details of their own cases directly, instead of depending entirely on their lawyers. Another is that copies of court orders and judgments are made freely available to the public, in several languages, so that anybody can read what the court did.

The list of initiatives

The digital steps courts have taken include electronic filing, hybrid hearings and the live streaming of proceedings. Judgments are translated into several Indian languages. And there is the National Judicial Data Grid, a portal through which case details are available to the public.

A clock at the gate

Since 2024 and 2025 a large display screen carrying a Virtual Justice Clock has stood at the Supreme Court's own main entrance gates. It shows judicial data in real time. A clock at a gate is a small thing, but it points the same way as everything else here: the court telling the public what it is doing, without being asked.

Pulling the chapter together

The judiciary makes one of the three pillars of government, independent of the other two. Its key roles are to see that justice is served and that laws stay inside the frame the Constitution sets. It carries an enormous number of cases, which is why these alternatives exist and why the digital measures matter. Every item in this topic is an answer to one of two questions: who should decide, and how does a person reach a decision-maker at all.

Scenario:

Two neighbours share a wall that is beginning to lean. Each blames the other's building work. They could file a civil suit and wait their turn in a crowded list. They could agree to put the question to an engineer they both trust, accept whatever she decides, and have that decision enforced if either of them goes back on it. Or they could sit with a neutral person who will not decide anything, and work out between themselves who repairs what. The quarrel is one. The routes out of it are several, and they differ in who holds the power to decide.

Analysis:

Notice what actually separates these doors. It is not how formal they feel but who ends up deciding: the court, the arbitrator, or the parties themselves. Choosing a route is choosing where to put that power.

Activity:

Add a fourth door to the story, through a Lok Adalat, in two sentences.

Title:

Run a mediation

Safety:

Use an invented or trivial dispute, never a real quarrel between classmates.

What You Notice:

The written note at the end is the lesson. In a mediation the parties decided; swap in an arbitrator and the same five minutes end with somebody else's decision binding them both.

Two of the three replaced criminal laws were written before the Constitution of India existed.

A Lok Adalat can sometimes settle a dispute that has never been filed in any court.

Judgments are translated into several Indian languages so that anybody can read them.

Arbitrator against mediator — ARBITRATOR ANSWERS, MEDIATOR ASKS — An arbitrator hands down a decision that binds; a mediator can only put questions and help the parties find their own answer.

The four statutes — 87, 96, 08, 23 — Lok Adalats 1987, arbitration 1996, Gram Nyayalayas 2008, mediation 2023.