Examine the role of Supreme Court as the final interpreter of the Indian Constitution. (2013, 15 Marks)
As the Constitution is the fundamental law, every statute and executive act must conform to it, and some organ must settle what it means; India gives that word to the Supreme Court. Yet, as US Justice Robert H. Jackson observed, such a court is “not final because we are infallible, but … infallible only because we are final” (Brown v. Allen, 1953). Indian finality is real but bounded.
The constitutional basis of finality
- Article 13 voids laws inconsistent with fundamental rights; Article 32 lets citizens seek writs directly; appeals under Articles 132–136 bring constitutional questions to it.
- Article 141 makes the law it declares binding on all courts; Article 145(3) requires at least five judges for substantial questions of constitutional interpretation and for Article 143 references; Article 147 extends such questions to the Government of India Act 1935 and related instruments.
- Through judicial review it tests legislation and executive action alike, shielding citizens from excess by either.
How it interprets
- Literal to purposive: A. K. Gopalan (1950) read Article 21 literally and treated rights as separate compartments; Maneka Gandhi (1978) demanded fair, just and reasonable procedure and linked Articles 14, 19 and 21.
- Harmonious construction: Minerva Mills (1980) held the balance between Parts III and IV itself a basic feature.
- Structural reading: Kesavananda Bharati (1973) implied a basic structure limit on the amending power, making the Court interpreter even of amendments.
- Living and transformative constitution: Navtej Singh Johar (2018) read down Section 377 to decriminalise consensual same-sex relations, invoking constitutional morality and transformative constitutionalism — themes Gautam Bhatia develops in The Transformative Constitution (2019).
Limits on finality
- Dialogue with Parliament: legislatures reply by amendment (the First Amendment after Champakam Dorairajan, 1951) or by statute (the SC/ST Atrocities amendment of 2018; the GNCTD Amendment Act 2023 after the May 2023 Constitution Bench). Peter Hogg and Allison Bushell call such exchanges constitutional dialogue.
- The Kesavananda compromise: Parliament may amend any provision; the Court decides only what is basic.
- Self-correction: the Court is not bound by its own precedents (Bengal Immunity, 1955); it overruled Golak Nath and ADM Jabalpur. Its advisory opinion of 20 November 2025 repudiated the “deemed assent” reasoning of the April 2025 Tamil Nadu Governor judgment.
- Other interpreters: Presidents, Speakers and Governors interpret the text daily; the Court sees only what reaches it.
Constitutional or judicial supremacy?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that the basic structure and the collegium show India drifting from constitutional to judicial sovereignty. The NJAC judgment (2015), deciding the Court’s own appointments, sharpens the point; Justice J. Chelameswar dissented. Mehta adds that, lacking a shared interpretive philosophy, outcomes turn on individual judges. The defence is that a final umpire is inherent in a written constitution, and that it saved the constitutional order in 1973–80.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court is the final, not the sole, interpreter: final in law under Article 141, but answerable to Parliament’s amending and legislative reply and to its own later benches. Its authority rests on reasoned, consistent interpretation that keeps the Constitution, not the Court, supreme.