SC judges to publicly declare assets: Recalling the 1997 ethics code which mentioned the idea

This document continues to inform conversations on how judges should conduct themselves while performing their official duties.

Restatement of Values of Judicial Life

Through the code, the SC attempted to create a framework for institutional accountability on multiple issues. It included declarations of judges’ assets and investments to the CJI and laying the groundwork for an “in-house procedure” to conduct inquiries against judges who allegedly transgressed these “values” and faced allegations of misbehaviour or corruption.

Adopting the “Restatement of Values of Judicial Life” gave ground to for every future measure for ensuring judicial accountability. It is a numbered, non-exhaustive list of 16 entries enumerating values for judges to uphold and pitfalls for them to avoid, which can be summarised as:

1. 01

   Key points

   *Judges must avoid actions that “erode” people's faith in the higher judiciary, as “Justice must not merely be done but it must also be seen to be done”;

   *Must not contest elections/hold office in clubs, societies, and associations;

   *Must avoid close association with “individual members of the Bar” and if any immediate or close family members are members of the Bar, they must not appear before the judge in court or be associated with any case or “cause” she is dealing with;

   *Similarly, such family members cannot be permitted to use the judge’s residence for professional work;

   *Must practice “a degree of aloofness consistent with the dignity of his office”, i.e. being impartial by maintaining distance from the case before her;

   *Must not hear and decide cases where a family member or friend is involved;

   *Must not publicly express views on political matters that may arise for judicial determination;

   *Must “let his judgments speak for themselves” and must not give interviews to the media;

   *Must not accept gifts or hospitality from anyone besides family and friends;

   *Must not hear and decide matters involving a company in which the judge holds shares unless previously disclosed and no objection is raised;

   *Must not “speculate in shares, stocks or the like”;

   *Must not engage in any trade or business “directly or indirectly”. This does not include legal publishing or anything “in the nature of a hobby”;

   *Should not seek any financial benefit connected to her office “unless it is clearly available”;

   *Must be conscious that she is “under the public gaze” and avoid acts “unbecoming of the high office”.

On the same day, the full court resolved to develop an in-house procedure to take action against judges who “do not follow the universally accepted values of judicial life”, including those indicated in the code. A five-member committee developed the procedure in October of that same year, and it was formally adopted in 1999.

Notably, they also resolved that all judges must declare to the Chief Justice of the court “all his/her assets in the form of real estate or investments… within a reasonable time of assuming office”. Though the resolution states that this declaration “shall be confidential”, this stance has shifted in the decades since.

Following another full court meeting in 2009, the judges decided to declare their assets publicly “purely on a voluntary basis”. Then, in 2018, a Constitution Bench held that the assets and liabilities of judges are not “personal information” for the purpose of RTI inquiries.

Invocation of ‘values of judicial life’

As the in-house procedure and the ‘values’ resolution are inextricably linked, the most recent example of this resolution coming into play is when Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna initiated an in-house inquiry against Justice Yashwant Varma last month. Together, the inquiry process and the ‘values’ resolution provide a method of holding judges accountable that does not have to involve questions of impeachment, for which the bar is set much higher.

As the SC put it in a 1995 case concerning allegations of financial impropriety against the Bombay HC Chief Justice, there is “a yawning gap between proved misbehaviour and bad conduct inconsistent with the high office”. Actions that would fall in the latter category of ‘bad conduct’ are enumerated in the ‘values’ resolution.

The resolution was invoked again in 2014 when the Supreme Court revisited the in-house inquiry process when a woman additional district and sessions judge from Madhya Pradesh filed a complaint of sexual harassment against a sitting judge of the High Court. The court clarified that the procedure is meant “for taking suitable remedial action against judges, who by their acts of omission or commission, do not follow the accepted values of judicial life”, including the ideals expressed by the Supreme Court in the resolution.