From rule of law to rule of power: The silent collapse of judicial authority in India

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak 

The Indian judiciary did not emerge overnight. It is the product of centuries of legal evolution shaped by religious traditions, colonial impositions, and post-colonial constitutional reforms. At its core, it was meant to uphold the rule of law, ensure accountability, and protect citizens from exploitation. By preventing crime and guaranteeing justice, the courts were entrusted with the task of sustaining peace and harmony in society.

The structure of this system, from district courts to High Courts and the Supreme Court, derives legitimacy from the secular Constitution. Emerging out of anti-colonial struggles, the post-independence framework envisioned a judiciary free of bias—class, caste, gender, religion, or region. Rooted in niti (law) and nyaya (justice), the courts once carried immense moral authority. They were perceived as institutions above suspicion, and this invisible power allowed them to deliver justice without fear or favour.

That moral authority, however, is fading. The independence and legitimacy of the courts have been corroded by corporatisation and marketisation, by political compromises with authoritarian leaders, and by communal biases cloaked in the language of nationalism. What we witness today is a slow death of the judiciary in the public imagination, a steady erosion of faith in its capacity to deliver justice.

The commercialisation of legal practice has worsened this decline. Access to justice now often depends on the ability to pay for top lawyers. The rich can navigate the system with ease, while the poor and marginalised languish in prisons. The principle of universality of law—justice available to all regardless of means—has been replaced by a market principle where money buys access. Predictably, ruling-class intellectuals then claim poverty itself is tied to crime, criminalising the poor while absolving systemic bias.

This blindness ignores how class, caste, gender, and regional inequalities permeate judicial practice. Legal “shopping” in a corporatised court system reinforces structural privilege, ensuring that the judiciary mirrors the interests of the propertied and the powerful. Unequal representation within the bench itself, skewed heavily towards higher castes and classes, deepens this democratic deficit and accelerates the judiciary’s decline.

The poor are not criminals—they are made vulnerable by a system that criminalises their everyday survival to protect a capitalist order built on exploiting labour and nature. When courts legitimise such an order, they forfeit credibility. Worse still, centralised constitutional provisions allow the government and higher courts to enforce autocratic measures in the name of safeguarding capital, eroding both federalism and democracy. From Indira Gandhi’s era to Narendra Modi’s, the pattern has been one of growing authoritarianism and divisive politics, now reflected starkly in judicial practice.

The constitutional promise of a secular judiciary is also under threat. With the rise of communal politics, minorities find themselves disproportionately represented in prisons. Communal biases in legal practice fragment justice, weakening not just the judiciary but the very foundations of democracy itself.

Recent judgments underline this degeneration. Whether in the Ram Mandir case, judicial scepticism towards welfare for the urban homeless, or the commentary on political speech and solidarity with Palestine, verdicts and remarks increasingly reflect political and ideological bias. Each such instance chips away at public trust.

The outcome is a judiciary that suits the ruling and non-ruling elites alike: pliable, weak, and compliant. It allows crimes of power to flourish while criminalising dissent and poverty. An independent judiciary, by contrast, would challenge dominant caste-class interests, expose the exploitative roots of crime, and serve as a bulwark of democracy.

The death of a judiciary is not sudden. It happens slowly—through compromises, through bias, through silence in the face of injustice. Reviving it requires a struggle against authoritarianism, communalism, and marketisation, and against every form of discrimination that undermines its independence. Without this struggle, the rule of law will remain hollow, and justice will remain a privilege rather than a right.