As Sober as a Judge.

Justice Kuttiyil Mathew Joseph
(Retiring from the Supreme Court of India
on  June 16, 2023)

Justice Joseph was not only an intellectual giant but also a judge who did not hesitate a bit in checking a power usurping executive. 

He was not the kind of judge, who wrote judgment with lucid language for law school students to read and chatter in seminars. Justice Joseph was the one who delivered judgments with relief giving approach and humane touch. After all a litigant comes to court to get relief from the rigors and hard clutches of law often made to rule that very litigant and not the eloquence of the language of a judgment.

We, the lawyers of Uttarakhand, are very fortunate in the way that Justice Joseph was our Chief Justice. We learned from him each day. Every case argued before him was a lesson to be learned. By his conduct in court room, he showed us how a judge should be. And by his gentle words of wisdom, he taught us as to how to be a lawyer.

He was jurisprudentially sound, patience, courteous, punctual and a judge with humility and compassion. There are not enough words to define Justice Joseph, he himself is the definition of ‘The Judge’.

Justice Joseph was a firm judge who delivered many great judgments while he was in the High Court of Uttarakhand. One of such landmark judgments, which shall be remembered is on Article 356 of the Constitution of India. Summarily told, it is power given to union government to dismiss the elected state legislature and impose presidential rule in the state. In the year 2016, elected state assembly was dismissed and the presidential rule was imposed in Uttarakhand. On the challenge of the constitutionality of such act of union government, Justice Joseph firmly decided the case against the union government of the day and restored the elected legislative assembly of the state of Uttarakhand by his judgment, on the basis of well settled position of law on this subject in S.R.Bommai case.

Another case in which the firmness of Justice Joseph is unforgettable, is about the illegal occupation of government bungalows by Ex-chief ministers of this state (however that case was finally decided much later by Justice Ramesh Ranganathan with equal firmness against ex-chief ministers). Since the creation of the state of Uttarakhand, there remained several chief ministers of the state and they illegally stayed over the huge government bungalows just in the capacity of ex-chief ministers of the state. Even after the issuance of notices by the court and hearing of the matter ex-chief ministers remained adamant and didn’t vacate the government properties, until one day during the course of hearing Justice Joseph issued an oral warning that if they don’t vacate, we will send force to get the government bungalows vacated. And as expected, with in no time of such harsh warning from the court all the respondents/ex-chief minsters of the state vacated government properties. Such was the resolve and firmness of Justice Joseph in dealing with the power usurping political executives.

It is obvious, for abovesaid reasons that he was not liked much by the rulers of the day. But we the lawyers and the citizenry of this country shall keep him in our everlasting memory as a judge who taught us to fight for justice without fear and uphold the constitutional values of “We the People”.

Kartikey