Judicial conduct regulation: do in-house mechanisms in India uphold judicial Independence and effectively enforce judicial accountability?

Abstract

In India, judicial discipline is exclusively enforced by the judiciary through in-house mechanisms, except for the constitutional removal procedure. The founding justification for in-house mechanisms is that they are indispensable to uphold judicial independence. In this milieu, the paper attempts to answer the following question: do in-house mechanisms in India uphold judicial independence and effectively enforce judicial conduct? The study, by analysing quantitative and qualitative data from 110 subject experts (judges, lawyers, and academics), offers an initial assessment of the implications of in-house mechanisms on judicial independence and judicial conduct regulation in India. The study lays special emphasis on the efficacy of in-house mechanisms in upholding “individual” and “internal” judicial independence. It also assesses the effectiveness of in-house mechanisms in enforcing judicial conduct. It concludes that in-house mechanisms, for both higher and subordinate judiciary, undermine individual and internal judicial independence. They are also ineffective in enforcing judicial conduct.