Calcutta:
Dissenting judgments were vociferously advocated by a sitting Supreme Court justice as a means of facilitating a culture of debate. At an event organized in Calcutta by the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Justice Dipankar Dutta highlighted why these are an important part of the legal system.
“We do not write dissenting judgments to point out flaws and loopholes in the majority opinion,” Justice Dutta said. “What the dissenting judge does is provide an absolutely new alternative view of the whole matter.”
The event commemorated Judge Radha Binod Pal, an iconic figure in international jurisprudence, best known for his courageous dissent during the Tokyo Trials, where he upheld the principles of fairness, impartiality and legality.
Justice Dutta said that disagreements will inevitably arise and it all depends on how one interprets the law and how one applies the law to given facts and circumstances.
“The second important aspect of a dissenting judgment is to stimulate debate and discussion. Dissenting judgments encourage critical analysis and reflection on the issues at hand,” he said.
To explain this point, he referred to this year's statistics at the Supreme Court, where they exist
benches of nine judges, seven judges and five judges.
Of the nine five-judge jurors, three dissented, he said. The same happened with two of the three decisions of the seven judges and all three of the three decisions of the nine judges.
“This means that of the fifteen decisions taken by constitutional benches during the year, eight, that is more than half, were dissenting, allowing for a constant culture of debate and from our colleagues on the bench learned,” he said.
Dissenting judgments also provide guidance for future cases by “planting seeds for possible reversal or modification,” he said.
“There have been cases in the past where the minority view has been accepted as the correct view over time,” Justice Dutta added.
Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha, who also spoke at the event, highlighted how the new Indian state was distancing itself from Justice Radha Binod Pal's dissent. The legal luminary was not the representative of India, he said, stressing the need to reinvent legal definitions inherited from the colonial past.
“My view is that the importance of Judge Pal's opinion is not really in the dissenting opinions. I think it is in the character of the person, in his courage… sticking to what he thought was true… When you have a greater interest, such as the interest of a nation, or even higher: the interest of the truth,” he added.