My Years in the Supreme Court continues...

The Supreme Court was also vested with the power to protect and guarantee the fundamental rights granted to the citizens and the residents in the Constitution. A citizen could move the Court for appropriate remedy if his fundamental rights were invaded by a law, regulation or executive order. Here the task imposed on the Court was very heavy indeed. Not only was it to protect citizens’ rights against invasion by legislation or executive orders passed by appropriate authorities set up under the Constitution, but also to examine existing laws and orders as well and grant protection against such of them as were incompatible with the provisions of the Constitution. It was no wonder that at one stage in its history it seemed that the Court would be overwhelmed by the burden of applications asking for remedies against the invasion of fundamental rights. Most of them questioned the provisions of the laws which were operative when the Constitution came into force.

The Supreme Court was able to weed out many of the laws on the statute book which interfered with the fundamental rights now guaranteed in the Constitution. As the reported judgments amply demonstrate, two approaches to this question soon manifested themselves among the Judges of the Supreme Court. A minority of the Court held that the constitutionality of the impugned statutes had to be examined by itself. If the provisions were incompatible with the Constitution they must be struck down, not-withstanding any restraint which the authorities enforcing the law may have shown.


The Court was concerned with what the law had enacted and not how narrowly—or for the matter of that how broadly—its provi￾sion had been enforced. A majority of the court concerned themselves with the narrower question as to how far the aggrieved. party had suffered on account of the impugned law. The minority held unconstitutional all the laws setting up special tribunals or prescribing special procedure for the trial of persons accused of certain
crimes.

To be continued..