Covering the Court

88,292. That’s the number of cases pending in the Supreme Court at 11am on 11 September. When I joined the Supreme Court Observer in January 2023, the number was about 78,000. But one of the many things I’ve learnt while covering the Court is that numbers only tell a part of the story. 

My first report was on the challenges to anti-conversion laws. I was only a few days into the job, scribbling notes as lawyers talked over each other and Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud tried to restore order. In that report, I wrote that he was “making sense of a chaotic hearing.” I soon came to think of this phrase as a job description. 

Many of the high-profile cases we covered after that—marriage equality, Article 370, Property Owners, sub-classification in reserved categories, and even Division Bench matters like the Kolkata hospital rape and, more recently, the Waqf Amendment challenges—unfolded with the same texture of chaos. Packed courtrooms. Sweeping opening statements. Sprawling arguments. Constant interjections and detours into history. 

In the initial days, my colleague Gauri helped me understand that our job was to speak clearly through the bedlam, to make the legal intricacies that were showcased (and sometimes couched) accessible to the average citizen. And to keep asking the question our Founding Editor Sudhir Krishnaswamy requests be centred in the reporting: So what? 

That question is deceptively simple. The professor and human rights lawyer Conor Gearty, who died earlier this week, wrote that the best legal writing “has a musical feel to it; the writer takes you on an exhilarating ride towards a full grasp of something previously opaque to you: no wrong turnings, no cul-de-sacs, no loose ends.” But Court hearings rarely follow that rhythm. So reporters piece together hours of oral arguments (supplemented by written pleadings), editors like my colleague Vikram distil them into coherent arcs, and fact-checkers (now Ajitesh, and previously Sushovan) point out what we’ve missed. 

Sometimes, especially on themes we’re personally invested in, we’re left wondering just what the brouhaha in Court amounted to. The marriage equality verdict disappointed sexual minorities by stopping short of recognising their right to marry; the much-discussed pan-India protocol for doctor safety is yet to see the light of day; the promise of restoring Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, made in the course of the Article 370 hearings, remains unfulfilled. 

It is easy to be frustrated by this pattern of grand pronouncements followed by incremental or no change. Cleaner victories and sharper defeats are simpler to capture in a headline. But change in a constitutional court rarely feels like an earthquake. It looks like erosion, noticed only if you return to the landscape years later. Often, I arrived at these moments of epiphany while reading the work of my senior colleague V. Venkatesan, who has, among other things, written this account of every Presidential Reference since 1950.  

On the occasion of the 79th Independence Day last month, my colleague Advay wrote that sometimes “we marvel at how far we’ve come; at others, we wonder how we’ve remained stuck in the patterns and preoccupations of the past.” All the contestations, allegations, repetitions in Court—now, in my more charitable moments (read: when I don’t have a 9pm filing deadline), I’ve come to see these as the buzz of democracy at work. 

The Court, like India, is inexhaustible. In the coming weeks, it will decide whether to stay the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act, pronounce an advisory opinion on the Governor’s powers before CJI Gavai’s impending retirement (my colleague Namrata’s reporting on the case is a must-read) and, hopefully, weigh in conclusively on Bihar’s contentious electoral revision process. 

The SCO team will continue to report and provide context on these matters, and more. After all, to understand just how India negotiates with itself on grand matters of justice, power and change, there’s nothing quite like the Supreme Court beat. 

This article was first featured in SCO’s Weekly newsletter. Sign up now!

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