Your Honour, Hands Off Judicial Service: Why the Supreme Court must cede ground to High Courts and States
The Supreme Court’s decades-long intervention in the regulation of state judicial service lacks a clear constitutional foundation and undermines the federal judicial governance architecture that the Constitution deliberately envisages.
Shivaraj Huchhanavar
Published on: 17 April 2026, 10:53 am
JUDICIAL POLICY FLIP-FLOPS are not uncommon in India, especially in policies regulating the service of subordinate court judges. Only last year, we saw the Supreme Court (‘SC’) reverse its earlier rulings on whether in-service candidates with adequate experience at the Bar and/or in judicial service qualify for direct recruitment into the higher judicial service. The Court also revisited the quota for the Limited Departmental Competitive Examination (‘LDCE’) in All India Judges Association v. Union of India. The latter ruling also reinstated a minimum of three-year practice at the Bar as a qualification for the post of Civil Judge (Junior Division). The SC is now, noting that the three-year practice requirement would affect the representation of women in the judiciary, poised to reconsider this three-year practice requirement, a question it has revisited on multiple occasions since the 1990s in the All India Judges’ Association line of cases.
The SC’s decision to review the minimum practice requirement within a year after its reinstatement appears puzzling. This is because, as noted in the All India Judges Case (2025), most High Courts and state governments concur that three years’ experience at the Bar is essential to enhance the efficiency and quality of judicial administration. In this case, several High Courts and state governments highlighted various other challenges arising from inexperienced judicial officers.
Moreover, the intensive pre-induction judicial training intended to compensate for such inexperience, as recommended by the Shetty Commission and endorsed in the All India Judges Association Case (2002), remains largely unimplemented. There is as yet no systematic, robust empirical study that conclusively establishes the causal impact of relaxing the three‑year practice rule on women’s representation, although emerging commentary underscores its potential negative implications for diversity.
Although the All India Judges Case (2025) and its ongoing review warrant critical examination, this piece does not critique either. Instead, it seeks to address a larger constitutional question: Does the Supreme Court possess the constitutional authority to prescribe policy for state judicial services? This piece concludes that SC’s policy interventions run counter to the express provisions of the Constitution. It further elucidates that the policy interventions undermine the regulatory autonomy and competencies of the High Courts and states. But first, the piece briefly outlines the extent of the SC’s interventions in matters of state judicial service.
