The judge who made room for the young

There are judges whose legacy is measured in landmark judgments they had delivered while in office and there are judges whose contribution is remembered through constitutional principles that continue to shape the law long after they have left the bench.

And then there are judges whose legacy lies in something less visible, but perhaps equally important in terms of the people they encouraged, the confidence they instilled in others and the opportunities they created.

Justice Sanjay Karol, who retires from the Supreme Court today, belongs to that last category in a way that deserves to be remembered.

I say this not merely as an observer of the Court, but as someone who had the opportunity, in the early days of my clerkship (July to September 2025) at the Supreme Court, to sit in his courtroom. The judge under whom I am clerking was bench partner with Justice Karol during the relevant time. What stayed with me from his Court was not one particular judgment or one particular exchange. Rather, it was the atmosphere of the courtroom itself. It was a young lawyer’s courtroom.

In an institution where experience understandably commands respect, Justice Karol’s courtroom seemed to be operating on a slightly different principle: experience deserved respect, but youth deserved an opportunity. A junior who had just begun appearing before the Supreme Court was not treated as someone who had to wait for years before being heard. The nervous first submission, the imperfect argument and the unfamiliarity with the courtroom - none of these actually became reasons to shut the door, especially in the courtroom of Justice Karol. Instead, they often became reasons to open it.

Justice Karol would ask senior advocates why their juniors were not arguing. He would also notice the younger members of the Bar and give them time. When a young lawyer made a good submission, he acknowledged the youngster for his arguments.

At the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) farewell held ahead of his retirement, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant spoke precisely of this quality itself. He recalled how Justice Karol would tell senior advocates when their juniors had argued a matter well, observing that such encouragement from a senior judge could mean far more to a young lawyer than any reassurance from elsewhere. The CJI also spoke of hundreds of young lawyers who had received opportunities to assist Justice Karol’s court as amicus curiae. This was part of his judging and I was fortunate to witness it before my eyes.

Justice Karol himself made this clear in his farewell address. He said that the real grooming of a lawyer happens in the courtroom and that he actually urged them to make use of whatever opportunity that came their way. About his practice of appointing young lawyers as amicus curiae, he said that he had not done them a favour, rather it was his constitutional duty. In court, he would ask who among the lawyers present was the youngest and who had not got any of their own cases. He would then ask these youngsters to come forward, after which he would appoint them as amicus curiae in that particular case. This practice perhaps captures the essence of how Justice Karol operated as a judge. He understood that a court is not merely a place where disputes are decided, but also where a legal professional is formed.

Any young lawyer appearing in the Supreme Court for the first time has to overcome the fear of getting something wrong in front of the bench. Justice Karol seemed to understand that hesitation and he made space for that first attempt for every young lawyer. There were occasions, particularly during vacations, when his court became almost an experiment where young lawyers were encouraged to argue, while seniors were asked to sit back. It was a very simple intervention that carried a larger message: the Supreme Court cannot remain a place where only those who have already arrived are allowed to speak.

Besides being a judge for young lawyers, Justice Karol was also a judge of people. The CJI in his farewell described the court of Justice Karol as a place that was not intimidating and where even sharp disagreement between parties was handled through dialogue rather than confrontation. The human being behind the case never seemed to be entirely absent from the courtroom of Justice Karol.

In motor accident matters, Justice Karol did something that struck me as both simple and deeply significant. He did not allow the passage of time to disappear into the procedural history of the case. A perusal of his judgments in motor accident matters would reveal that he would bring the delay itself to the forefront. In Naseema v. Rajendra Singh, the very first page of the order recorded in the form of a table the time consumed at each stage of the litigation. In this case, it was 7 months before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT), almost 18 years before the High Court and another 1 year before the Supreme Court. Those numbers could easily have remained in the case chronology, but by placing them on the first page of the judgment, Justice Karol made the delay impossible to overlook.

This was not confined to one case. In one of his last judgments, in Shishu Pal @ Shish Ram and Others v. Surjit and Others, he had examined more than 100 motor accident compensation matters which had come up before him and had found that the claims were, on average, pending for approximately 6 years before the MACT and around 8 years before the High Court. In that case, he passed slew of directions with respect to timely disposal of these accident cases. Instances like these show that this court functioned not merely to ensure compliance of any rules, but to understand how laws and rules encountered human life.

As a law clerk, I sometimes found myself wishing that I could appear before him. Not because appearing before a judge is in itself achievement, but because there was something to be learnt from the way he listened and dealt with disagreement.

I was fortunate enough to witness the way his bench operated as a law clerk, but I can only imagine what it must have meant to be a young advocate, who perhaps for the first time would have been told by a Supreme Court judge: 'Why don’t you argue?' These words may occupy only a few seconds in a room, but for a young lawyer, they can change a career.

Justice Karol retires not only as a judge who dispensed justice from the Bench, but rather as one who also made space for the younger generation to find its voice.

Anadi Tewari is a law clerk-cum-research associate at the Supreme Court of India.