Judges can be witty too — New book makes case for humanity, humour and heart in the judiciary

Can a judgment quote Bon Jovi, make you smile, and still deliver hard legal reasoning? A new book releasing today suggests — why not?

Titled “Shaping the Judges: Essays in Honour of Dr. Balram K. Gupta”, the volume compiles thought-provoking essays from India’s leading judicial minds, including 10 sitting Supreme Court judges. Among them, Justice Surya Kant’s piece — “Humour in Judgment Writing” — makes the case for letting wit breathe in black-letter law.

Justice Kant doesn’t call for punchlines in place of precedent, but suggests that a well-placed dash of levity can illuminate rather than dilute the law. “Judges are not wooden robots,” he writes. “They drink the same water, eat the same food, and watch the same movies.”

The book, edited and introduced by Shruti Bedi, is a personal and scholarly tribute to her father, noted jurist and mentor Prof (Dr) Balram K Gupta. His decades-long influence on judicial training, ethics and legal academia is palpable throughout the collection, which brings together contributions from judges, scholars and legal philosophers who have crossed paths with him or been shaped by him.

In his essay, Justice Surya Kant observes that judgment writing is often a judge’s only expressive space. “There are no novels or op-eds for judges — only the judgment. If humour, used sparingly, can aid clarity and improve engagement, why shy away from it?” He’s careful, however, to draw the line: “Humour must never humiliate. The dignity of litigants must remain intact.”

He recalls precedents where creativity has been welcomed — and one from Kansas where rhyming got a judge reversed for judicial flippancy. As he puts it, “Humour must not be the tail that wags the judgment.”

But Justice Kant isn’t alone in using the pen to go beyond procedure. The book’s Part A, titled Essays and Discourses, features Justice BV Nagarathna on Judicial Training, Justice Sanjay Karol on Public Trust and Confidence, Justice DY Chandrachud on The Judiciary and the Media, and Justice AK Sikri on unconscious bias in judicial decision-making.

From ‘Talkative and Silent Judges’ (Justice Girish S. Kulkarni) to ‘Building Happy Judicial Minds’ (Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan), the volume navigates the philosophical, procedural and emotional landscape of what it takes to be a judge in contemporary India.

The contributors read like a judicial who’s who — Justices Rajesh Bindal, Joymalya Bagchi, Swatanter Kumar, Adarsh Goel, AK Patnaik, and Dr Justice S Muralidhar, among others, lend their voices to topics ranging from judicial ethics to AI in the courtroom.

Part B — Tributes and Testimonies — offers deeply personal insights into Prof Gupta’s legacy. From Justice GS Singhvi’s “A Great Human Being” to Justice Madan Lokur’s “The Socrates Edict”, and Justice Arun Monga’s “A Journey Nothing Short of Epic”, the tributes show how one man’s mentoring shaped the moral compass of an entire generation of judges.

The introduction, penned by Shruti Bedi, reads not just as a daughter’s homage, but as a rare reflection on how family, scholarship, and values have intersected to build a legal legacy. She calls her father “a quiet force who shaped others through wisdom, not noise”.

Prof (Dr) Bedi, otherwise, is a Professor of Law & Director at the University Institute of Legal Studies, Panjab University. An internationally recognised legal scholar, she is an International Fellow at the National Institute of Military Justice, Washington DC, and a Visiting Professor at Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. She also serves as the Director of the Centre for Constitution and Public Policy.

The book does not come with citations to landmark judgments — but it makes a landmark statement: That judges, too, are human. And sometimes, a little humour helps them deliver a more humane kind of justice.