DHANANJAYA Yeshwant Chandrachud has retired from the highest judicial office of the Chief Justice of India. However, he has left the seat of justice raising a fundamental question of what drives a judge to form an opinion and decide contested cases.
The question has been raised because he disclosed that he had prayed to God for guidance in determining the politically sensitive litigation between Hindus and Muslims that involved an issue of who is entitled to the possession of land in Ayodhya for religious purposes.
It is a practice for lawyers in India and other commonwealth jurisdictions to address judges of superior courts as ‘Milord’ or ‘My Lord’. The phrase is a respectful form of address borrowed from the French word ‘Milor’, meaning a nobleman.
The phrase does not convey that judges are divinity or avatars of Ishwar (incarnations of God), or have any access to what the Supreme Being communicates, or have a higher cognitive faculty to receive revelations from the Almighty. If US judge Richard Posner's classic How Judges Think is read, it does not say judges look for any supernatural source before banging the gavel!
