Life and personal liberty are important and they must continue to be enforced. Although the Supreme Court justified the curtailment of liberty during the emergency, it made amends afterwards. Of course, by that time the emergency had been lifted. As some one said, ``he was always at his best only when the going was good.''

Any judgmentupholding life and liberty is laudable. What Nariman said long before the judgment turns out to be correct: ``The jurisprudence of Article 21 has, I believe, reached a bursting point: it is more invoked like a mantra, a cure-all.'' But I admit my inability to comprehend how a CBI inquiry into the arbitrary allotment of 15 petrol pumps by the minister to those related to politicians and various officials in the petroleum ministry violates Article 21. Such judgments cast a pall of doubt on reports like the one submitted by Justice Wadhwa Commission on the murder of the Christian missionary and his two sons. Justice Wadhwa's credentials are being questioned unnecessarily by some political parties. They find no fault with the state government which has failed to take any serious step to trace the culprit, Dara Singh of the RSS parivar. The police took their own time to file the FIR as if there was no urgency.

Incidentally, Justice Saghir Ahmed's judgment reverses the verdict of Justice Kuldip Singh, who retireda few years ago. One more judgment by Kuldip Singh on the protection of the ridge for environmental reasons was partially reversed by another Supreme Court judge. I have not kept any record. But it appears that several of Kuldip Singh's judgments are being undone.

It is strange that judgments should be reversed in the course of review. There was a time when the review was rarely done. Now such reviews have become fairly common. This is against the letter and spirit of review. There is a pronouncement by a Privy Council that even when the judgment is wrong, it should be reviewed only if it is factually incorrect or if the calculations made do not add up to the figures given.

The Supreme Court has gone through various phases. Once it was known for judgments on cases like those of Golaknath (1967) and Keshavananda Bharti (1973). In the first case, the view taken was that none of the fundamental rights was amendable to the amending power in the constitution. In the second case, it was held that no part of theconstitution, including the fundamental rights, was beyond amendment. However, it was made clear that while doing so, the basic structure of the constitution could not be changed.

The Keshavananda Bharti case was followed by the supersession of judges, a watershed in the history of Indian judiciary. Three of them, K. S. Hegde, J. M. Shelat and A. N. Grover were passed over to make their junior A. N. Ray the Chief Justice of India. The late Mohan Kumaramangalam, then the Minister for Steel and Mines, justified the act. He asserted that the government was motivated by the consideration that the Chief Justice should be the one who would `help' the government and whose political philosophy would be ``the most suitable'' for the executive's viewpoint. This cost the Supreme Court dearly in terms of independence and credibility. Indira Gandhi was the prime minister then.

During the emergency (1975-77) the Supreme Court went down further in everybody's eyes. Only Justice H. R. Khanna stood up and he paid theprice when he was not made the Chief Justice. Again Mrs Gandhi showed what authoritarian rulers could do to the judiciary. However, the Supreme Court began to act without fear or favour after she was ousted in 1977. Many landmark judgments have been pronounced since. One of them relates to the S. R. Bommai case. For the first time, it was laid down that the dismissal by the President of a popularly elected government under Article 356 was subject to judicial review. In that judgment, secularism was defined as a basic structure of the constitution, not alterable.

There have been judgments which put a question mark against the Supreme Court. The recent ones on the Sharma case and the hawala scam have only made the question mark bigger. The general impression is that the Supreme Court at times exceeds its immense powers.

I am not talking about judicial activism which in certain cases has gone to a ridiculous extent. Even ordinary functioning of the executive is sought to be supervised. I am referring to thetendency to interfere. The unpalatable truth is that the court, for quite some years, has been acting unpredictably. There is insufficient respect for the written law and decisions tend to be based upon the personal predilections of judges.

One of the difficulties in offering answers to the criticism against the Supreme Court is that the debate is conducted in a public vacuum. The great answers can be intelligently sought by the public, and those offered can be intelligently weighed, only if the people in general come to know much more than they know about the simplest aspects of the court's functioning.

The notion of many lawyers and judges that the Supreme Court is beyond the view and appraisal of ordinary mortals is mistaken. All of its decisions are announced, and its most important cases are heard at public sessions which everyone is welcome to attend. Yet mystery continues to enshroud the court, with unfortunate results. Among them are the surprise and consternation which attend the perennialdiscovery that our highest judges are human and make a lot of law in the course of interpreting the law.

This is a court of justice, a lawyer once exclaimed while arguing a case in the Supreme Court of America. ``You are in error,'' Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., instantly replied. ``This is a court of law.'' He meant that the court was primarily concerned with the meaning and constitutionality of law rather than with the fate of individuals who encountered the law.