Trial by timeline : Why are judges being judged 

When Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court Judge Nyaya Bindu granted bail to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on June 20, 2024, in a money-laundering case linked to the Delhi liquor policy, she was swiftly branded “biased” and “unfit for the Bench.” In July 2022, Supreme Court judges Justice Surya Kant and Justice J.B. Pardiwala faced similar abuse for their courtroom observations in the Nupur Sharma–Prophet remarks case. And recently, after Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai’s remark during a hearing — advising a petitioner to “ask the deity himself” if he was such a strong devotee of Lord Vishnu — was twisted online, social media erupted with casteist slurs and even calls for his impeachment. The distortion was so vicious that FIRs had to be registered in Punjab under criminal provisions, including those protecting Scheduled Castes.

These are not isolated storms but signs of a deeper corrosion. What was once spirited legal debate has decayed into digital persecution. Disagreement with a verdict now easily mutates into a personal attack on the judge. The judiciary — once protected by anonymity and decorum — now faces trial by timeline, where algorithms amplify anger and anonymity breeds recklessness.

Former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s warning now echoes like prophecy: “Special interest groups and pressure groups are trying to use social media to affect the minds of the courts and the outcomes of cases.” He clarified that while citizens may discuss judgments, the targeting of judges “raises fundamental questions about whether this is truly freedom of speech and expression.”

That question goes to the heart of constitutional propriety. Article 121 forbids even Parliament from discussing a judge’s conduct except through an impeachment motion — a restraint designed not to privilege judges but to protect the institution from popular passion. The Supreme Court has repeatedly drawn a fine but firm line: criticism of judgments is legitimate; imputing motives is contempt, for it erodes the faith that sustains justice. Public confidence, invisible yet indispensable, is the judiciary’s oxygen.

Early rulings reminded us that “freedom of speech is not the freedom to destroy faith in the judiciary.” The Preamble’s solemn promise of justice — social, economic, and political — presupposes a judiciary capable of commanding respect. And Article 124(4), with its elaborate process for the removal of judges, was designed precisely to shield them from the shifting tempers of public opinion.

Yet in the digital age, every verdict trends before it’s read, every observation is clipped out of context, and every judge becomes a hashtag. Judicial independence, meant to be insulated from political and emotional pressure, is being drowned in noise. The corrosion begins online but soon seeps into the public mind — replacing faith with suspicion.

True accountability in law is institutional — through appeal, review, and curative jurisdiction.  Judges cannot respond, for the Bench speaks only through its judgments. Their silence is not weakness; it is dignity. To abuse them because one dislikes a verdict is not democratic engagement — it is intellectual vandalism. The judiciary has no army, no purse, no propaganda — its strength lies only in public faith. To corrode that faith through reckless commentary is to tamper with the architecture of the Constitution itself. For when a democracy stops believing in its judges, it slowly stops believing in justice.

Criticism, when reasoned, strengthens democracy; when reckless, it poisons it. The distinction between the two is not semantic — it is moral. A society that values freedom must value restraint, for liberty without respect is anarchy in disguise. The time has come to reclaim that discipline of disagreement. Debate verdicts, yes — but not demean those who deliver them. For when a society begins to mock its judges, it begins to mourn its justice.