Judges must be open to feedback from legal community: Justice S Muralidhar

Former Orissa High Court Chief Justice and Senior Advocate S Muralidhar recently underscored the importance of judges remaining open to feedback from members of the legal community..He emphasized that feedback, if taken in the right spirit, can be a catalyst for self-correction."Feedback you definitely get from the bar, and you can do a self correction. But, you must be open to it. That's very important, and you must be able to take that kind of feedback in the right spirit," he said.Justice Muralidhar made these remarks during a dialogue with Justices Mukta Gupta, UU Lalit, Badar Ahmed, and R Basant, moderated by Senior Advocate Raju Ramachandran and advocate Malvika Prasad.The dialogue titled "Conversations on Justice" was organised in honour of recently retired Supreme Court judge Justice S Ravindra Bhat by Justice Bhat's family, friends and current and former law clerks.The event was held at India Habitat Centre in New Delhi..In response to a question from Ramachandran about feedback from lawyers, Muralidhar said that feedback is an ongoing process and can be from various sources including secretarial staff and stenographers and not just from the bar. "You constantly get feedback not just from the bar. From the bar, it seeps in through your stenos, your secretary and it reaches you. So that constantly happens," he said..In addition, he discussed the challenge of striking the right balance between implementing necessary changes and maintaining established legal norms. Justice Muralidhar shared his experiences as a Chief Justice where he attempted to address the mounting case backlog, only to encounter resistance from the bar."The bar started protesting, saying, 'You're trying to do something new which other judges didn't do, so we're not prepared for this.' So, you then ease off. You do this balancing between going too far and doing too little," Justice Muralidhar explained..Justice Lalit admitted to not receiving much direct feedback. However, he did recall an instance where Senior Advocate Soli Sorabjee had commented on his courtroom demeanor. "I don't think I have received any feedback from any member of the bar except one, perhaps where my own senior, Mr. Sorabjee, once told me, 'you look very conservative in court'," Justice Lalit stated.Read what former CJI UU Lalit said here.Read what retired Justice R Basant said here.Read what retired Justice BD Ahmed said here..[Watch full event below]