For Chief Justice DY Chandrachud's Speech, UK Top Court President Offers His Seat

In a special gesture for Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, the President of the UK Supreme Court on Thursday offered him his seat for his address.

Lord Reed offered his seat when the Chief Justice was in the UK Supreme Court to deliver a lecture on "Commercial Arbitration: Shared understandings and developments in UK and India".

The event was held in the courtroom of the President of the UK Constitutional Court.

During his speech, Chief Justice Chandrachud praised the Indian judiciary.

"The courts in India are overburdened despite the High Courts disposing of 2.15 million cases and the District Courts disposing of 44.70 million cases in 2023. These figures show the trust that the people of India have in their judiciary. Our judiciary functions on the mantra that no case is small or big," he said.

The Chief Justice said that every aggrieved person who approaches the doors of the judiciary has the right to a just remedy.

"In attending to these grievances, the courts in India perform their plain constitutional duty. The width of our jurisdiction was designed to ensure the widest access to justice. But surely every case need not find a remedy before a court, with emerging forms of dispute resolution such as arbitration and mediation gaining acceptance," he said.

He said that the values of a liberal democracy enshrined in the Indian Constitution allow people to seek individualized solutions to their legal problems outside the judicial setup if the solutions do not violate established law.

"I am not sure that many of us judges today have that "pleasant privilege" of sending both sides happy. But this prose gives us the idea of arbitration - which is the resolution of disputes between parties by a neutral decision-maker outside domestic court systems," he said.

"Arbitration is one such alternative method of dispute resolution. Arbitration is no longer an "alternative". It is in fact the preferred method of seeking commercial justice," he added.

Earlier this week, Chief Justice Chandrachud addressed the Oxford Union Society on the topic of the humanising role adjudicators can play in society, where he highlighted the role of technology in injecting greater transparency into the judicial system.