National Judicial Appointments Commission

Imagine a college where the senior professors alone choose who joins the faculty, never explain why, and nobody outside can ask. Students might trust the professors, and still ask for a wider panel. That is the argument behind the National Judicial Appointments Commission: the judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court were choosing their own colleagues, and Parliament tried to add a wider panel. The Supreme Court then had to decide whether Parliament could do that at all.

In two minutes

The National Judicial Appointments Commission was a six-member body created in 2014 by constitutional amendment and an Act to replace the collegium, but the Supreme Court struck down both in October 2015 because the design weakened the judiciary's primacy in appointments and with it the independence of the judiciary, a basic feature.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Constitutional Law – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.