The Evaporating Freedom of Indian Universities: Academic Autonomy and the Health of Democracy

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A true and healthy democracy requires universities that are free to think, question, research, and speak. These are structural essentials. They train citizens to distinguish evidence from propaganda, act as early-warning systems for social and political pathologies, protect spaces for dissent before those spaces vanish elsewhere, and generate independent knowledge that can restrain official power. When that freedom evaporates, a democracy loses one of its most reliable mechanisms of self-correction. In India the ideal remains constitutionally grounded yet practically eroded. International assessments place the country in the “severely restricted” category of academic freedom, reflecting cumulative tightening of institutional autonomy, campus expression, and scholarly independence.

Why do free universities matter? In answer we need to draw comparative historical lessons with concrete cases of institutional purges, analyse the pressures visible in India with specific recent examples, and consider what a more durable settlement of autonomy and accountability might require.

We all know that a democracy needs more than periodic elections. It requires a citizenry capable of evaluating competing claims, debating unpopular ideas, and holding institutions accountable. Universities perform these functions through teaching, research, public debate, and the cultivation of intellectual pluralism. Students learn not only technical skills but the habits of evidence-based reasoning and constitutional literacy. Scholars often surface problems—environmental degradation, communal polarisation, economic inequality, or the misuse of law—before they harden into crises. Campuses remain among the few places where an unpopular argument can still be voiced without immediate political or administrative punishment. Independent research equips journalists, courts, legislators, and ordinary citizens with data that can challenge official narratives. As Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has observed, a healthy democracy requires institutions that give people space to “think differently, question established positions and express their views.”

Academic freedom is not a narrow professional privilege. It encompasses the freedom of teachers and students to study, teach, research, discuss, and publish diverse viewpoints, while institutional autonomy supplies the practical conditions that make that freedom possible. Individual academic freedom protects inquiry and dissent. Institutional autonomy ensures that universities, rather than the state or a ruling party, control appointments, curricula, research priorities, and campus events. Freedom of expression, within lawful limits, enables public criticism. An AAUP-linked study on India underscores the point: “being able to teach freely, as well as to write and to think on sensitive issues, is critical for sustaining democracy.”

History supplies stark illustrations of what happens when these protections collapse. In Nazi Germany after 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service triggered systematic purges. At the University of Heidelberg roughly 23–25 percent of the teaching staff were dismissed; among those forced out were the socialist jurist Gustav Radbruch, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Otto Meyerhof, the sociologist Alfred Weber, and numerous others labelled “non-Aryan” or politically unreliable. The University of Berlin lost approximately 32–36 percent of its academic staff; the Nobel chemist Fritz Haber resigned in protest and left, while dozens of colleagues in medicine, economics, and the humanities were removed. At the University of Göttingen some 45 professors were dismissed, including the physicists Max Born and James Franck, the mathematicians Richard Courant and Emmy Noether. The University of Frankfurt suffered comparable losses, approaching 37 percent of its faculty. After the 1938 Anschluss the University of Vienna expelled more than 350 teachers—over 200 on racial grounds—and barred roughly 2,230 Jewish students. Curricula were ideologically remodelled and the remaining staff were brought into line. The destruction of academic independence both preceded and accompanied the dismantling of democratic institutions.

In the Soviet Union, research was repeatedly subordinated to official ideology. The most dramatic episode came with the August 1948 session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), which elevated Trofim Lysenko’s doctrines and declared classical genetics a bourgeois pseudoscience. At Moscow State University the Biological Faculty was reorganised; the geneticist Ivan Schmalhausen was removed as head of the Darwinism Department and the entire staff of the genetics and Darwinism departments were dismissed. Parallel purges struck Leningrad State University, where opponents of Lysenko were replaced by his supporters. Across the country hundreds of geneticists were dismissed, demoted, or transferred; textbooks were withdrawn and laboratory materials destroyed. Earlier, Nikolai Vavilov, the leading plant geneticist, had been arrested and died in prison. Scientific conclusions were required to conform to political doctrine, with lasting damage to biology and agriculture.

Under apartheid in South Africa, universities that challenged racial segregation faced sustained pressure. In 1968 the University of Cape Town appointed the Black anthropologist Archie Mafeje to a senior lectureship; the Minister of Education immediately intervened, threatening legislation that would force the university to rescind the offer and bar future Black appointments. The university yielded; students responded with a large sit-in that became a landmark protest for academic autonomy. The University of the Witwatersrand similarly confronted government attempts to impose racial quotas on admissions, restrict political activity on campus, and apply financial sanctions. Student leaders and staff were harassed, residences raided, and protests met with police action. Independent scholarship at these institutions nevertheless helped sustain opposition and contributed to the eventual democratic transition.

The common lesson is clear: when universities become instruments of official ideology, society forfeits its capacity for self-correction. Post-independence India once treated universities and research institutions as contributors to a democratic public culture—through constitutional scholarship, social-science research, scientific institutions, and vigorous student politics. Their value lay not in enforced unanimity but in the capacity to argue.

India’s constitutional framework appears, on its face, to protect the necessary freedoms. Article 19 safeguards speech, expression, assembly, and association; the Preamble’s commitments to liberty, equality, and fraternity supply a normative foundation for free inquiry. Yet the practical environment has grown more contested. The Scholars at Risk report *Free to Think 2026* records that India’s Academic Freedom Index score fell from 0.38 in 2022 to 0.14 in 2025, placing the country in the “severely restricted” category. The report links the decline to greater central-government influence over university governance, leadership appointments, and academic priorities, and documents dozens of specific incidents. India recorded the highest number of attacks among the countries covered in the reporting period.

Institutional autonomy has become a central flashpoint. The proposed UGC framework for vice-chancellor appointments expands eligibility beyond senior academics to candidates from industry, public administration, and public policy, while strengthening the role of government-appointed authorities in selection. Because vice-chancellors shape faculty recruitment, curriculum, campus discipline, and intellectual culture, such appointments are never merely administrative; they determine the direction of the institution. Parallel concerns have been raised about the removal of the earlier 10 percent cap on non-permanent, contract faculty. Insecure employment can discourage research or speech that risks displeasing administrators or governments, converting academic work into a form of precarious labour subject to quiet self-censorship.

Campus expression and individual academic freedom have narrowed through concrete actions. At South Asian University, Professor Snehashish Bhattacharya was terminated in September 2025 for “misconduct against university interests” after he and fourteen other faculty members signed a November 2022 letter criticising the university’s handling of student protests the previous month; he had already served a two-year suspension. At the SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Tamil Nadu, Assistant Professor Lora Santhakumar was suspended in May 2025 and dismissed in December after posting WhatsApp status updates opposing war and criticising civilian casualties linked to Indian military action in Pakistan; one post read, “Say NO to war. And don’t be afraid to say so, even if it is not the popular opinion.” Her contact details circulated online, triggering abuse and death threats. At Jamia Millia Islamia, Professor Virendra Balaji Shahare was suspended for setting an examination question that asked students to “discuss the atrocities against Muslim minorities in India” in a course on social problems.

The most recent and sustained confrontation at Jamia Millia Islamia itself illustrates how demands for basic institutional democracy—student representation—can rapidly escalate into restrictions on campus life. In October 2026, students launched an agitation demanding restoration of the Jamia Millia Islamia Students’ Union (JMISU), whose elections have not been held since 2006. Hunger strikes began; the administration shifted classes online, closed gates and libraries, restricted canteen access, and later extended online teaching and moved end-semester examinations online. Students reported detentions, campus bans, and pressure on hostels; the university alleged vandalism, stone-pelting, damage to gates and CCTV systems, and threats to staff. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was invoked outside the campus to prohibit unlawful assemblies. Political figures from opposition parties attempted visits, prompting FIRs for alleged trespass; teachers accused outsiders of escalating an internal matter. The administration offered elections within 15 days of approving a union constitution, revoked some suspensions, and promised an inquiry into security conduct—yet protesters continued, seeking firm dates and further accountability. What began as a demand for a student body after two decades of suspension became a wider contest over the right to organise, occupy space, and press institutional claims without the campus being locked down.

Event cancellations and administrative restrictions have become routine elsewhere as well. Banaras Hindu University and the University of Mumbai cancelled lectures because invited speakers had voiced criticism of the BJP-led government. Delhi University cancelled a seminar titled “Land, Property and Democratic Rights,” citing “administrative reasons,” and at one point imposed a temporary blanket ban on public meetings, rallies, and demonstrations that halted cultural festivals, press conferences, and iftar gatherings; later rules required 72-hour prior approval for protests, with threats of expulsion or police action for violations. Earlier, the 2017 “Cultures of Protest” seminar at Ramjas College (University of Delhi) was violently disrupted by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad after invitations were extended to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid; stones were thrown, power was cut, and the event was partially cancelled under pressure. Similar administrative interventions have included the cancellation of a talk at IIT Madras described as “controversial and unsuitable,” a Delhi University professor required to submit lecture text before travel approval, and the cancellation of a Karnataka State Open University conference after government protocol objections.

A related pathology is the deployment of political labels—“anti-national,” “urban Naxal,” “tukde-tukde gang,” or “dimaagi Naxal”—to delegitimise scholarship, student politics, or criticism of government policy. Such rhetoric does more than silence individuals; it teaches a generation of students that questioning power is itself dangerous. A democracy suffers when patriotism is redefined as agreement with the government of the day rather than loyalty to the Constitution and the public interest. Additional pressures include the Jammu and Kashmir authorities’ ban on the sale, distribution, and possession of 25 books examining the region’s political and social history, and disciplinary actions against students at institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Jamia Millia Islamia over protests.

A balanced assessment must acknowledge that universities face genuine challenges of quality, funding, employability, campus discipline, and the prevention of violence or hate speech. Regulation is legitimate when it protects students, upholds academic standards, and prevents institutions from becoming partisan political bases. The decisive test, however, is whether rules are neutral, transparent, and applied through academic bodies rather than used to suppress inconvenient ideas. The problem intensifies when governments control leadership, funding, appointments, event permissions, and research priorities in ways that encourage self-censorship. Scholars at Risk warns that without autonomy, scholars and students may constrain their own research and teaching out of fear of repression. The October 2026 events at Jamia show how even a demand for a long-suspended student union—itself a form of institutional accountability—can trigger campus closures, preventive detentions, and competing narratives of vandalism versus crackdown, leaving little neutral space for negotiation.

What, then, would a healthier settlement look like? Clear autonomy boundaries should be published, distinguishing decisions that properly belong to university academic bodies from those that genuinely require government approval. Vice-chancellors, deans, and faculty should be selected through credible, transparent, academically led processes. Lawful dissent—campus seminars, student debates, research publications, and peaceful protests—should not be treated as security threats merely because they criticise policy or demand institutional representation. Secure academic employment, whether permanent or fair contractual, reduces the fear that shapes what scholars choose to study or say. Disciplinary action against students or faculty must follow transparent procedures with avenues for appeal and judicial review. Finally, curricula in history, politics, religion, caste, gender, economy, and science should be taught through evidence and multiple perspectives rather than ideological conformity. Student unions, long a feature of Indian campus life, should be restored through clear, time-bound processes rather than left in indefinite abeyance that itself becomes a flashpoint.

A democracy is healthiest not when its universities agree with power, but when they are strong enough to disagree with it responsibly. The Indian question today is therefore not whether universities should be free to think and act; it is whether the country can afford the democratic cost if that freedom continues to evaporate. The constitutional architecture still exists. The empirical record of restriction—documented in specific dismissals, cancellations, and administrative controls at South Asian University, SRM, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University, Mumbai University, Ramjas College, and elsewhere, and most recently in the prolonged 2026 student-union agitation at Jamia itself—is now well established. The remaining variable is political will: whether governments, university administrators, and the broader public recognise that independent universities are not adversaries of the nation but among its most valuable assets. Without that recognition, the space for evidence-based dissent will shrink further, and the capacity of Indian democracy to correct its own errors will diminish accordingly.

#JamiaMilliaIslamia #BanarasHinduUniversity #RamjasCollege #MumbaiUniversity #SRM, #SouthAsianUniversity, #JNU, #AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad, #LoraSanthakumar #TrofimLysenko #FritzHaber #Göttingen #MoscowUniversity #ScholarsAtRisk  #IntellectualFreedom #UGCIndia #StudentProtests #DissentMatters #DelhiUniversity #EducationUnderThreat  

Without Fear or Favour? Three Democracies, Three Judiciaries, and the Strange Business of Justice

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Today, Indian judiciary is facing vigorous scrutiny by the civil society and important stakeholders, barring the Godi Media, of course.

Let’s discuss the anatomy of a judicial system that sometimes forgets what justice is for. Let’s find out where it stands vis-a-vis judicial systems in two other major democracies.

1. Justice: Available in Principle, Delayed in Practice

Justice is blind. Unfortunately, in India, she is also frequently exhausted, overworked, under-resourced and trapped in a queue that began forming before some litigants were born.

A citizen approaches the courts seeking justice. The Constitution promises equality before the law. The lawyer promises a vigorous argument. The judge promises to hear both sides. And the system promises, without specifying a delivery date, to consider the matter.

Meanwhile, the citizen grows older, the witnesses grow forgetful, the evidence gathers dust, and the lawyers' bills continue to arrive with commendable punctuality.

Welcome to the world's largest democracy, where the judicial process can sometimes resemble a relay race in which every participant inherits the baton but nobody remembers where the finishing line is.

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul's Without Fear or Favour provides a particularly revealing entry point into this predicament. The memoir raises questions about judicial appointments, the executive's role in the Collegium process and the handling of sensitive cases. Its reported observations have also revived debate about the relationship between former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and his colleagues.

These are not trivial disagreements over administrative etiquette. They concern the institutional arrangements through which a democracy attempts to prevent political power from becoming judicial power's uninvited supervisor.

The experiences of India, Britain and the United States reveal three different approaches to this challenge. India struggles with opacity and executive friction. Britain has developed a more formalised appointments mechanism but faces serious delays in criminal courts. America protects federal judges through life tenure while making their selection an intensely partisan spectacle.

Each system has its virtues. Each has its failings. And each demonstrates that judicial independence, like constitutional democracy, is easier to proclaim than to maintain.

2. India: Of Collegiums, Governments and Constitutional Courtesies

India's judicial appointment system is an extraordinary constitutional arrangement.

The President formally appoints Supreme Court and High Court judges, but recommendations are controlled by the judicial Collegium, a mechanism developed through Supreme Court judgments rather than created by an express constitutional provision.

The arrangement emerged partly from a legitimate fear: if the government could freely appoint judges, it might appoint people whose greatest qualification was an agreeable disposition towards those in power.

The Collegium was supposed to prevent precisely that.

Yet an institution designed to protect judicial independence has developed its own problems. Its deliberations are largely private, its criteria can appear inconsistent, and the public is often left wondering how one candidate becomes a judge while another disappears into administrative oblivion.

The government, meanwhile, can delay recommendations, raise objections and return names for reconsideration. Under the established process, reiterated recommendations are expected to be honoured, but the interval between recommendation and appointment can itself become consequential.

Enter Justice Kaul's memoir.

The reported concerns about government views being sought before Collegium deliberations raise an uncomfortable question: if the executive's preferences enter the room before judges have independently formed their collective judgment, whose judgment is the Collegium actually exercising?

The government need not issue an order saying, 'Appoint this person and reject that one.' Influence can be subtler. A delay here, an objection there, a request for reconsideration somewhere else: the cumulative effect may matter more than any individual intervention.

Of course, an executive objection is not automatically interference. Governments may possess relevant information about candidates. National security and integrity concerns cannot simply be dismissed because they originate with the executive.

The constitutional question is whether such concerns are examined through transparent, principled procedures or become convenient instruments for rewarding the agreeable and inconveniencing the independent.

There is also the troubling issue of sensitive case assignments. Reports concerning the reassignment of a bench handling a politically consequential matter invite scrutiny, but they do not, by themselves, establish improper interference. Judicial administration must distinguish legitimate roster management from arrangements that could undermine confidence in impartial adjudication.

The point is simple: the public must have reason to trust the process.

A judiciary cannot demand unquestioning faith in its independence while treating reasonable questions about its internal workings as an assault upon judicial dignity.

That would be rather like a restaurant insisting that its kitchen must remain secret because diners might otherwise enquire about the ingredients.

The Collegium's defenders have a compelling argument: judicial appointments must not become a prize distributed by the ruling party. Its critics have an equally important point: independence from the executive cannot justify freedom from accountability.

India needs both.

3. Britain: Less Mystery, More Machinery

The United Kingdom offers a different model.

Following the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, judicial appointments became more institutionally separated from direct ministerial patronage. The Judicial Appointments Commission operates under a statutory framework, while Supreme Court appointments follow a separate selection process involving a specialised commission.

Merit, professional competence and fair selection have a more formal place in the process than in India's largely judge-controlled Collegium arrangements.

This does not make Britain immune to political controversy. Nor does it mean that appointments are mechanically objective. Merit itself requires judgment, and every selection system must confront questions about diversity, professional background and the assumptions embedded in its criteria.

Nevertheless, Britain offers an important lesson: judicial independence is strengthened when procedures are established in advance, responsibilities are clearly allocated and appointments do not depend principally on the private preferences of a small circle of judges.

There is something refreshing about an institutional arrangement that does not require the public to imagine what happened behind a closed door.

But Britain has a different problem. Its courts may be structurally independent and still struggle to deliver justice promptly.

The criminal courts in England and Wales have faced a substantial backlog, with official statistics recording 80,829 open Crown Court cases at the end of June 2026. The figures also show that many cases have remained outstanding for a year or longer.

For a defendant awaiting trial, institutional elegance offers limited consolation.

For a victim waiting to testify, a carefully designed appointments commission cannot substitute for an available courtroom.

For witnesses whose memories fade, justice delayed can become evidence compromised.

Britain's predicament illustrates an essential distinction: independence determines whether judges can decide freely; capacity determines whether they can decide in time.

A country may perform reasonably well on the first test and disappoint on the second.

The British system also demonstrates that governments need not interfere directly with judgments to weaken the administration of justice. Inadequate resources, insufficient judicial capacity and poor planning can produce serious consequences without a single minister telephoning a judge.

Sometimes institutional neglect achieves what direct interference would make politically embarrassing.

4. America: Judges for Life, Politics for Keeps

The United States offers another constitutional experiment.

Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, enjoy substantial protection through life tenure during good behaviour and safeguards against salary reduction. Their appointments, however, are made through an openly political process: the President nominates, and the Senate provides advice and consent through confirmation.

There is no pretence that politics plays no role.

Presidents seek judges whose constitutional philosophies are compatible with their own. Senators scrutinise nominees, question their records and frequently turn confirmation hearings into ideological combat.

The Supreme Court appointment process can become a national political event, complete with partisan campaigns, strategic manoeuvres and predictions of constitutional catastrophe.

The American system thus presents a paradox.

Before appointment, judicial selection is conspicuously political. After appointment, federal judges possess substantial institutional insulation from the politicians who selected them.

An American president may celebrate appointing a Supreme Court justice, only to discover that the justice does not regard the presidential campaign manifesto as a binding judicial precedent.

This is an important safeguard. A judge is not supposed to function as a political contractor whose services remain available to the party that secured the appointment.

But life tenure is no guarantee of public confidence.

When appointments are intensely partisan, citizens may begin interpreting judgments through the political identity of the judges rather than the legal reasoning supporting their decisions.

The danger is not merely that judges may be ideological. Every judge brings intellectual assumptions and interpretative commitments to the bench. The danger is that the judiciary begins to look like an unelected legislature divided into political camps.

The American experience also raises questions about judicial ethics, particularly at the Supreme Court level. The introduction of a Supreme Court Code of Conduct in 2023 represented an effort to address public concerns, but questions about implementation and enforcement have continued.

A code is useful. A credible mechanism for applying it is better.

If an institution writes its own ethical rules but inspires doubts about how those rules will be enforced, its defenders cannot reasonably expect the public to regard the matter as settled.

America's lesson for India is therefore not to copy its appointment system wholesale. It is to recognise the value of strong post-appointment protection while acknowledging that political selection can damage legitimacy even when judges remain formally independent.

5. Professional Ethics: The Bench Is Not Above the Rules

Judges occupy a peculiar position in a democracy.

They exercise immense authority, often without facing voters. Their decisions can affect liberty, property, reputation and the survival of governments. Yet their authority depends not merely on constitutional provisions but on the public's belief that they exercise it honestly.

This makes judicial ethics indispensable.

India has articulated principles of judicial conduct, including the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life. The Bar has its own professional obligations. But the existence of ethical declarations is not the same as consistent enforcement or transparent accountability.

The judiciary must be protected against malicious attacks. Judges cannot be expected to decide controversial cases while conducting a popularity contest on social media.

Yet protection from harassment must not become immunity from legitimate scrutiny.

A judge who makes an error is not necessarily unethical. A judge who reaches a controversial conclusion is not necessarily politically compromised. A transfer or appointment delay is not, by itself, proof of a conspiracy.

But credible allegations of conflicts of interest, improper influence or departures from established procedures deserve examination through appropriate mechanisms.

The same principle applies in Britain and America.

Britain's more formalised arrangements and established conduct guidance provide useful institutional safeguards, but they do not eliminate human fallibility. America's ethical framework likewise faces the challenge of ensuring that rules are credible, consistently applied and capable of commanding public confidence.

The standard should be neither judicial infallibility nor judicial humiliation.

It should be accountability without intimidation.

The public must be able to question judicial conduct without being treated as an enemy of the judiciary. Equally, political actors must not weaponise accountability procedures simply because a judgment has inconvenienced them.

Judicial independence protects the judge from political retaliation. It does not confer a personal entitlement to public reverence.

A court is not a temple in which constitutional questions must be whispered. It is a public institution in which power must justify itself.

6. Dispensing Justice: Three Democracies, Three Waiting Rooms

The ultimate test of a judicial system is not the elegance of its constitutional architecture. It is whether ordinary people can obtain justice without surrendering their savings, their peace of mind or the better part of their lives.

India's backlog remains a formidable challenge across the Supreme Court, High Courts and subordinate judiciary. The National Judicial Data Grid makes pending cases more visible, but visibility is not resolution.

A digital dashboard can tell a citizen that a case has been pending for years. It cannot explain why the case has not been decided, compensate for the financial strain or restore lost opportunities.

India needs more judicial capacity, better case management, stronger court infrastructure, adequate support staff and a serious effort to reduce avoidable adjournments. Vacancies must be addressed, but recruitment alone cannot solve every procedural and administrative weakness.

Britain's criminal-court backlog demonstrates that even comparatively well-established institutions can become overwhelmed when resources and case-processing capacity fail to keep pace with demand.

America's federal courts have their own caseload pressures, although comparisons require caution: the federal judiciary handles only part of the country's judicial business, with state courts dealing with a vast range of ordinary civil and criminal disputes.

Comparing the three countries through one headline figure would therefore be misleading. Their jurisdictions, populations, court structures and reporting methods differ substantially.

Nevertheless, the underlying question is universal.

What does judicial independence mean to a poor citizen who cannot afford prolonged litigation?

What does constitutional supremacy mean to a prisoner awaiting trial?

What does equality before the law mean when the wealthy can sustain a legal battle for years while the less fortunate cannot?

And what is the practical value of a favourable judgment if enforcement takes another round of litigation?

There is a particularly cruel irony here. The richer litigant may be able to treat delay as a strategy. The poorer litigant experiences it as punishment.

In such circumstances, the law may remain formally equal while access to its remedies becomes profoundly unequal.

Justice delayed is not always justice denied, but a system that routinely makes delay unbearable risks turning a fundamental right into a luxury service.

7. The Final Verdict: Independence Must Deliver

Justice Kaul's Without Fear or Favour invites a conversation that India needs to have without descending into either hero worship or political mudslinging.

India's judicial independence must be defended against improper executive pressure. The Collegium must become more transparent, consistent and accountable without surrendering judicial appointments to the government of the day.

Britain demonstrates the value of a more formalised appointments system, while its court backlog warns that institutional independence cannot compensate for inadequate capacity.

America demonstrates the strength of secure judicial tenure, while its partisan confirmation battles warn that politicised appointments can weaken public confidence long after a judge takes office.

India should learn from both without pretending that either offers a perfect template.

The objective must be a judiciary that is independent before appointment, protected after appointment, accountable in its conduct and effective in dispensing justice.

Most importantly, judges must be able to decide cases without fear of government displeasure or favour towards political power. They must also be willing to explain institutional decisions, observe ethical standards and accept legitimate scrutiny.

For a democracy, the judiciary is neither the government's department nor its political opposition. It is a constitutional institution charged with ensuring that power operates within the law.

That responsibility becomes especially important when the executive is powerful, the opposition is weak, public debate is polarised and citizens increasingly look to the courts to settle disputes that political institutions cannot resolve.

But the courts cannot rescue democracy alone. Nor should they be expected to replace competent government, responsible legislatures or accountable administration.

The judiciary must do its own job, and the other branches must do theirs.

Ultimately, the title of Justice Kaul's memoir supplies a standard against which every democracy should measure its courts.

Without fear of the powerful.

Without favour to the politically connected.

Without arrogance towards the ordinary citizen.

And without forgetting that the authority of a judge comes with a duty to serve the law, not personal prestige or institutional convenience.

A democracy does not need judges who are fearless only when the consequences are comfortable. It needs judges who can uphold the law when the powerful would prefer otherwise.

And citizens do not merely need courts that are independent. They need courts that work.

Otherwise, justice will remain a magnificent constitutional promise delivered through an administrative system that seems determined to test the patience of the living and the endurance of the dead.

The law may be blind. The system has no excuse for keeping the citizen waiting indefinitely.

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