Judges must be conscious of their remarks during hearings, could be misconstrued on social media as final judgment: CJI DY Chandrachud

Judges must train themselves to deal with the challenges posed by social media and remain conscious of what they say when court proceedings are being live-streamed and reported live, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said..Otherwise, judges risk being misconstrued on social media, he explained while speaking on the impact of live reporting of courtroom hearings. .The CJI made the observation while responding to a question on the impact of social media on the judiciary at an event organised by Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession last month..He recounted that there used to be very few journalists in the courts before the advent of social media. But now there are “a million journalists” who are reporting live on court proceedings, he said.“Virtually by the minute, not at the end of the day. So that just sums up what we have to encounter,” he told the gathering..While he acknowledged social media does create issues for judges, CJI Chandrachud also conceded that there is little choice in the matter. "Technology is no longer a choice and therefore social media is not a choice. We are working in a society where we have the prevalence of social media," he observed. .He added that dialogues between the judges and lawyers are often misconstrued on social media when such comments are reported live. He observed that there are two types of judges - ones who reveal what they have in mind and the others who summarise what has been argued.“You have judges who play the devil's advocate, who tell the lawyer why they are wrong in the proposition, which they are making to draw out the best of the lawyer. And then you have another type of judges. The second type is judges who would restate what the lawyer is saying and take it to its logical conclusion," he said. .The CJI further explained that often, people assume that what the judge is saying during the hearing points to the possible judgment of the court. “And that creates a problem because what is being debated in the court is a debate. It is not a verdict or it is not a point of view. What I say in the course of arguments may not even in fact be the line of final conclusion, which I am going to take, but which I am testing for the purpose of a dialogue. That is a problem,” the CJI said..This issue assumes more significance during criminal trials, CJI Chandrachud observed. In criminal justice, there exists a presumption of innocence before the pronouncement of judgment. However, social media users often comment on the merits of the case while the case is still under investigation, he noted. While it is easy to say that judges were trained to exclude all such aspects consideration, the prevalence of electronic media has cast some doubt, he added. “A trial judge who is hearing a case is already flooded with news, views, even at the stage of investigation, which takes us into broader areas as to whether there should be some form of regulation, or always whether self-regulation is the correct thing,” Justice Chandrachud said..CJI Chandrachud also revealed that he was not on X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook but reads the newspapers. He added that he was trained to keep his reasoning as a judge distinct from what is expressed in the media. However, he acknowledged the need to train the judges so that they remain cognisant of the challenges that new technologies, particularly the social media, impose on them,“We need to re-skill ourselves. We need to be more conscious about what we say in court when we are live streaming our proceedings because we're likely to be misconstrued,” CJI Chandrachud said.