Letters to the editor

Judiciary & scrutiny

• The question of “judicial overreach” in the areas of fundamental rights cannot be answered by invoking much-quoted constitutional cliches of “respecting each other’s constitutionally assigned roles to the three organs of the state” (‘Equality is a fine balance’, April 14). It does raise a question of the very legitimacy of judicial review by an ‘independent judiciary’, which must be squarely faced. One must accept that constitutional and human rights questions are political questions, and not as “pre-or-supra-political ideals, as reflective of a truth beyond politics to which politics ought to be subject”, and that while implementing, enforcing or interpreting constitutional human rights provisions, the courts are no less political than the legislature and the government. The judgments of the courts about constitutional issues are, in reality, not transcendental ‘truths’, but political and socio-economic declarations, which deserve due institutional respect, but not moral and intellectual subservience. It is therefore necessary for ensuring and preserving the legitimacy of judicial review, that the judiciary, even though legally final in constitutional interpretation, must treat itself as co-equal to the legislature and government in unfathoming the constitutional principles of rational justice, humane government and participatory democracy. Neither of them is final or infallible. Both are accountable to the Constitution.