Supreme Court judge Justice Surya Kant has backed reforms to enhance transparency in the collegium system even as he strongly defended its role in safeguarding judicial independence..He said that recent steps by the Supreme Court reflect a growing commitment to public confidence and accountability.“Despite its imperfections, the collegium remains a crucial institutional safeguard,” he said during an address in the United States this week..Delivering a keynote at Seattle University’s Roundglass India Centre earlier this week, Justice Surya Kant acknowledged the sustained criticism faced by the current appointment mechanism to the higher judiciary..While describing the collegium process as “imperfect,” he stressed that it remains essential for insulating judges from executive interference. .“Recent efforts by the Supreme Court signal a growing commitment to enhancing transparency and public confidence in the system,” he said, adding that judicial autonomy must be continually asserted, negotiated, and exercised within a framework of democratic self-restraint..Justice Kant, who is slated to be the next Chief Justice of India, underscored that the judiciary’s legitimacy is “most enduring when it is exercised with a sense of humility.” Courts must be seen not as omnipotent arbiters but as co-travellers in the democratic journey, grounded in constitutional values, he opined..Justice Kant delivered three speeches in Washington State over the past week - first at the Washington Supreme Court in Olympia, then at Seattle University and finally at Microsoft’s global headquarters in Redmond.The topics spanned themes from constitutional fidelity and public interest litigation to the challenges and promises of artificial intelligence in legal systems..At the Washington State Supreme Court, the judge drew comparisons between foundational decisions like Marbury v. Madison in the US and Kesavananda Bharati in India, arguing that courts on both sides of the world are not passive interpreters but “vigilant sentinels” guarding constitutional ethos. “Liberty, equality, and self-governance are not historical accidents; they are the hard-earned legacy of those who dared to envision a just society,” he stated..From Olympia to Redmond, the thread of constitutional morality remained central to his message. At Microsoft’s campus, Justice Kant turned to the evolving role of artificial intelligence in judicial infrastructure, highlighting innovations such as India’s SUVAS translation engine, automatic speech recognition-based real-time transcription in constitutional bench hearings and the LegRAA research assistant..While praising the potential of AI to democratize access to justice, he cautioned against chatbots conjuring fictitious precedents and stressed that technology must serve and not supplant human judgment..“In our courts, justice is not a product to be optimized but a principle to be honoured,” he stated. Speaking of cyber threats and AI misuse, the judge underscored that courts must invest in not just technological sophistication but also constitutional resilience..In Seattle, the tone was more philosophical and he invoked Tagore and Martin Luther King Jr., describing the judiciary as a “quiet sentinel” whose task is not to dominate, but to preserve the democratic conscience..“Democracy is not a gift to be received—it is a discipline to be practiced,” he said..[Read full text of speeches]
