Dua Associates Chennai partner Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy has now been confirmed and appointed as additional judge of the Madras high court.

In a first, Modi govt changes collegium’s recommendation on HC judge’s appointment

20 months after Justice Rajiv Shakdher had been transferred from the Delhi high court to the Madras high court despite protests from senior counsel at losing Shakdher, he is now coming back to Delhi.

A video of Donald Trump’s nominee for US federal court judgeship getting grilled by a Republican senator, who is an ex-law professor, and failing to answer basic question of law has gone viral, resulting in Matthew Peterson withdrawing his name from contention . See the rather amusing video below, v...

The Supreme Court collegium has recommended to the Madras high court bench who would probably be the first of a modern Indian law firm’s partners, as well as the second-ever NLSIU Bangalore graduate.

The Supreme Court’s collegium of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra and the next senior-most judges, justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, have begun to post recommendations for elevations and other business on a new ‘resolutions of the collegium’ section of its website according to minutes dated 3 October.

And here’s one of the problems with the opaque collegium and judiciary, which rarely if ever officially confirms anything to journalists, leaving reporting on the bench to often be sourced on hints and whispers.

Senior counsel Dushyant Dave, writing in The Wire, has criticised a number of recent decisions of the Supreme Court regarding judicial elevations and transfers, for having been as opaque (as ever) and having missed out on obvious candidates, suggesting that executive pressure scuppered the elevations of several judges who’d handed down decisions the government wouldn’t have liked.

The Supreme Court collegium has finally completed its year-long-awaited draft of the memorandum of procedure (MOP), which would govern how judges are appointed in future, reported the The Times of India’s Dhananjay Mahapatra earlier today:

With the last batch of Supreme Court elevations having been made only in May 2016 with four new judges (who had been recommended in December 2015), the collegium’s latest recommendations of five new Supreme Court judges were cleared by the president yesterday.

The SC collegium has reportedly recommended that the following judges become permanent high court chief justices, according to the Indian Express : Justice Hemant Gupta for Madhya Pradesh High Court; Justice Abhilasha Kumari for Tripura High Court; Justice B D Ahmed for Jammu and Kashmir High Court;...

The law ministry has asked Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra in a letter to help it create a list of lawyers who are willing to act pro bono in cases, which could end up being “one of the proposed yardstick (sic) to be considered for appointment as Judges of High Courts”.

Justice Jasti Chelameswar, the fifth-most senior judge of the Supreme Court, and a member of the SC’s collegium, made the news today with the New Indian Express publishing his refusal to participate in a Supreme Court collegium meeting, as a protest against the collegium’s failure to comply with the principle of transparency of its proceedings.

On 17 August, before it broke for a long weekend of four days, a three-judge Supreme Court (SC) bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi, Prafulla Chandra Pant and AM Khanwilkar referred a challenge to its immunity from the Right to Information (RTI) Act to a five-judge constitution bench. The decision, made after a brief hearing, was a surprise as well as a disappointment.

“Highly-placed sources in the government said today that in November, 2013 the collegium had recommended appointing a member of the state judicial services as additional judge to the Patna High Court. But the government had then returned the file to the collegium requesting it to “reconsider” the decision. The government’s move was based on an Intelligence Bureau report,” reported the PTI.

At 11:15 am today, the Supreme Court began its proceedings for the last day of the current term. It was 45 minutes behind its usual schedule.

Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice Ashok Bhushan and the former additional solicitor general L Nageswara Rao were sworn-in as judges of the Supreme Court on Friday.

“Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K M Joseph, who recently delivered the strongly-worded judgment quashing President’s Rule in the state, [will be transferred] to the High Court of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. News of his transfer evoked a strong reaction in legal and other circles, with senior advocate Indira Jaising putting out a series of tweets questioning the collegium’s move,” reported the Indian Express.

The Supreme Court collegium has recommended four names for elevation to the Supreme Court.

India cannot achieve its economic growth without a robust judiciary overseen by an adequate number of judges, Chief Justice TS Thakur said on Sunday.